m 



I LIBRARY OF COiXGRESS. # 






^UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.! 



J^^ 3 c/ 







Saint Patrick, 



Oj / 'i AND 



THE EARLY CHURCH OF IRELAND. 



BY THE 

Rev. WM. M.'bLACKBURN, D.D., 

author of 
" William Farel," "Aonio Paleario," " Ulrich Zwingli," Etc., Etc. 




PHILADELPHIA : 

PEESBYTERIAN BOAED OF PUBLICATION, 
No. 821 CHESTNUT STREET. 

/ CA r. 



^s^ 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869, by 

THE TRUSTEES OF THE 

PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the 
Eastern District of Pennsylvania. 



^.'■^./"^-'■^-»'^^.'*■«s.'*V•>'■>s./~<s»'>./'^^-. 



Westcott & Thomson, 
Stereotypers, Philada. 



CONTENTS. 



PREFACE. 

The Myth and the Man — Book of Armagh — Writings oi 
Saint Patrick — Evidences of Authenticity — Other Ancient 
Authorities — Modern Writers 7 

CHAPTER I. 

HOME AND PARENTAGE. 

Alcluyd — Good Blood — Potitus the Presbyter — Calpurnius 
the Deacon, and Decurio — Culdee Cells — Conchessa — First 
Missions in Scotland — Ninian, a specimen ...« 21 

CHAPTER IL 

THE YOUNG CAPTIVE. 

Patrick Baptized — Foolish Legends — The Lad not a Saint — 
Pirates — Patrick Sold in Ireland — Tends the Cattle — 
Rough Days — Remembers his Sins — Turns to God — His 
Religion 39 

CHAPTER IIL 

THE ESCAPE. 

Dreams — The Fugitive— On Shipboard — A Storm— A Desert 
— A Strange Spell — Home Again — Dreams of Ireland — Will 

be a Missionary , 54 

3 



4 CONTENTS, 

CHAPTER IV. 

THE FAILURES OP PALLADIUS. 

Early Missions in Ireland — Churches — Celestine Interested 
— Palladius Sent — Kot well Received — Goes to Scotland — 
His Disciples — Servanus — Ternanus 63 

CHAPTER V. 

SIFTING THE LEGENDS. 

Germanus — Stories of Patrick's Wanderings — Climax of 
Fable — Was Patrick ever at Rome? — Was he Sent forth 
by the Bishop of Rome? — Silence of Ancient Authors on 
the Question — Sechnall — Fiacc-^Prosper — Bede — Patrick 
Confounded with Palladius — Silence of the Confession — ■ 
Roman Mission a Legend 75 

CHAPTER VI. 

AMONG THE DATES. 

When did Patrick go to Ireland to Preach ? — Where Labour 
before he Went? — Any ties with Germanus? — Germanus 
and Lupus in Britain — Glastonbury — Movement in Ar- 
morica — Patrick Goes to Ireland — Young at Forty-five 96 

CHAPTER VIL 

FIRST LABOURS OF PATRICK IN IRELAND. 

An Affrighted Herdsman — A Wrathy Master — Patrick not a 
Pirate — Fury Calmed — Preaching in a Barn — A Church 
Rises — Patrick's Visit to his Old Master — Repulse — Look- 
ing toward Tarah— The Young Benignus — Patrick's Tent 
before Tarah 110 



CONTENTS. 6 

CHAPTER Vlir. 

THE DRUIDS. 

Cutting the Mistletoe — Sacrifices — Baal — Sun-worship — 
Druids' Doctrines — Priests — Superstitions — Holy Wells — 
Charms— Beltine Fires — Bards — Scotch Plaids — Irish Hos- 
pitality — Danger from the Druids 123 

CHAPTER IX. 

SAINT Patrick's armour. 

Great Feast at Tarah — King sees Patrick's Fire — The Court 
on the Move — Patrick in the Great Hall Preaching — Dub- 
tach and Fiacc Listen — The Hymn of Patrick , 140 

CHAPTER X. 

CAUSES OF SUCCESS. 

A Commanding Presence — Conall Converted — Mode of 
Teaching — King's Daughters — Doctrine of the Trinity — 
Legend of the Shamrock — Treatment of Superstition — 
The Grom-cruach — Patrick destroys the Great Idol — 
Pagan Custonds Adopted by Christians — Centres of Influ- 
ence — Love of Pioneering — Enthusiasm — Patrick's Ex- 
tended Travels — Daring Spirit — Goes into Connaught — 
Robbed — Many Baptized — Endurances — Refusals of Gifts — 
Attention to Young Men — Redemption of Captives — All 
done in the Name of the Lord — Willing to be a Martyr — 
Power of Prayer — National Form of Early Christianity in 
Ireland — Persecution — Patrick's Charioteer dies in place 
of his Master — The Leinster Men 151 



e CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XI. 

Patrick's creed. 

His Confession — Tillemont's View of it — The Doctrines in it 
— Occasion of the Epistle to Coroticus — Christian Captives 
— Noble Appeal by Patrick — An Embassy Scorned — Doc- 
trines of the Epistle 183 

CHAPTER XII. 

THE CHURCH OF SAINT PATRICK. 

Theme of Controversy — Students under Patrick — Cell of 
Ciaran — Culdee System of Schools — Young Men ordained 
Bishops — Fiacc made Bishop of Sletty — Certain Conclu- 
sions — More Bishops than Churches — Her Synods — Glory 
of the Early Irish Church — The Decline — Invasions by 
Danes and English — Henry II. delivers Ireland to the 
Pope — Two Churches in Ireland — Strange Reversions in 
History 196 

CHAPTER XIII. 

LAST DAYS. 

Eeform of the Laws — Patrick's Purgatory — Old Age — Toiling 
to the Last — St. Brigid — Patrick dies — Ireland in griefs — 
'* Litany of St. Patrick" — Canonization — True Character... 220 



PREFACE. 



There is profit in *' guesses at tnith," when they expose 
errors long and widely prevalent. They are like links of 
circumstantial evidence, no one of them singly of much 
positive value, but when joined and welded, they make a 
chain not easily broken. They are probabilities, and, 
according to their degree of strength, they afford convictions 
of certainty. I do not claim to set forth in this volume a 
series of events all of which are the undoubted verities of 
history. I do claim that the statements are as near to the 
complete truth concerning the subject treated as it has 
been possible for me to exhibit them after long and labo- 
rious research. 

No concession is made to superstition by giving the title 
of " saint" to the man whose name has become so popular, 
and, after fourteen hundred years, is still as fresh as the 
shamrock and green as the emerald. Without the title he 
would hardly be identified or seen in his distinctive 
character. A good gospel word was abused when Rome 
assumed to confer upon eminent Christians the honour of 
being saints, and limited the term to them. By the New 
Testament charter we may claim it for all true Christians, 
however humble or unknown. 
7 



8 PREFACE, 

Was there ever such a man as Saint Patrick ? It was wise 
to consider this question before attempting to write his Hfe. 
By some it has been doubted, by a few others denied. But 
in such cases there has usually been a strong party feeling, 
or an ignorance of certain original sources of history. There 
is a distinction to be made between the myth and the man. 
Imagination has given us a Robinson Crusoe ; the real man 
was Alexander Selkirk. The Saint Patrick of the ordinary 
Irish heart is certainly very mythical. The portrait of him 
was drawn from imagination ; the colours are not those of 
the fifth, but those of the twelfth or fourteenth century. 
The deeds are manufactured to order and by the job, and 
the life is made of the baldest legends. This Patrick is a 
fully-developed Papist of the time, when certain errors pre- 
vailed, which he could not have known in the fifth century. 
He is constantly working miracles, some of them very 
trifling, and some of them astounding, beyond all that was 
ever recorded of a mere man. For his especial benefit 
divine revelations are made to him, which cause a greater 
amazement than any ever made to Moses or Paul. He is 
too wonderful to be real. The myth business was entirely 
overdone. The manufacturers did not perceive that com- 
mon sense might some time be restored to the human race. 

In the Middle Ages " it was customary with the monks 
to exercise their scholars in writing the lives of imaginary 
saints ; asserting that it was a pious and very improving 
way of exercising the imagination ! ! The best of these 
fanciful biographies were laid aside for future use ; and 
after the lapse of a few ages, when their statements could 
not be disproved, were produced and published as genuine. 



PREFACE. ^ 

It is said the monks of Holywell applied to De Stone, a 
writer of the thirteenth century, to write for them the life 
of their patron saint. He asked for materials, but on being 
informed that they had none, he volunteered to write 
it without any. In this way the lives of St. Patrick were 
greatly multiplied, and were filled with the most marvellous 
legends." * 

Dr. Geoffrey Keating, more than two hundred j^ears ago, 
said: "We are informed by a manuscript chronicle of 
antiquity that sixty-four persons have severally written the 
life of this reverend missionary. ' ' As to the ' ' antiquity, ' ' it 
would not have been so very antique with most of them. 
Dr. Lanigan, a Roman Catholic historian, felt ashamed of 
the legend-makers, and he ssljs of these lives that " they 
are full of fables, and seem to have been copied, either 
from each other, or from some common repository in which 
such stories have been collected. It would be idle to men- 
tion the many proofs which they exhibit of being patched 
up at a late period." And Bollandus, one of their learned 
writers, says concerning them, "They have been patched 
together by most fabulous authors, and are none of them 
more ancient than the twelfth century. ' ' This is not said 
of all the accounts given of Patrick by the annalists, some 
of whom wrote at a much earlier period. It is said of the 
fuller lives. In them is seen Patrick, the myth. 

Yery different was the man Patrick. If we strip away 
the burdening growth of wild ivies, we may get at the 

*' Ireland and the Irish, by Kirwan (Eev. N. Murray, d.d.) 
This title was given to a series of letters published in the K. Y. 
Observer, 1856, and to which I am much indebted. 



10 PREFACE, 

genuine sturd}^ oak of liis cliaracter. Even the grossest 
fables may have a foundation in fact. Often in the legends 
of the monks there can be traced a thread of historic truth. 
If we cast away the rubbish without sifting, we may lose a 
few gems hidden in the mass. If we allow that the so- 
called miracles of Patrick are most absurd, it does not at 
all follow that the history is a romance. Dr. Murray said : 
*' Whilst there are many and good reasons for the rejection 
of the lives of Saint Patrick as so many monkish fables, as 
stupid as they are nonsensical, yet that there was a very de- 
voted and greatly useful missionary of that name, endued with 
apostolical zeal, in Ireland, and about the time to which 
history refers, we are compelled to admit. ' ' 

Traditions are of some value in regard to his existence 
and general history. ' ' The traditions in the Book of 
Armagh, ' ' says Dr. Todd, ' ' cannot be later than the third 
half century after the date usually assigned to the death of 
Saint Patrick. They assume his existence as admitted by 
all parties and never questioned. Had the story of Saint 
Patrick been then of recent origin, some remarks or 
legends in the collection would certainly have betrayed the 
fact. That the collectors of these traditions indulged in 
the unscrupulous use of legend strengthens the argument. 
There were men alive, at the time, whose grandfathers 
might have conversed with the disciples of the Patrick 
who was said to have converted the Irish in the latter half 
of the fifth century. Had the existence of this Patrick 
been a thing to be proved, or even doubted, some of these 
men would have been produced as witnesses, and made to 
tell their experience. ' ' For there was a great assumption 



PREFACE. 11 

made ; it was that Armagh had a right to the jurisdiction 
over all other churches in Ireland — a claim not generally 
admitted. To prop it up these traditions were collected. 
All was based upon the existence and acts of Patrick, and 
yet in this curious record there is no attempt to prove that 
he had actually lived in Ireland. A whole people was ready 
to admit it — so ready indeed that, upon their admission and 
high regard for the man, is built up a very faulty theory of 
church authority. The foundation was solid — the structure 
was of wood, hay, stubble. 

"It is incredible that a whole nation could have com- 
bined thus to deceive themselves ; and it is even more in- 
credible that a purely mythological personage should have 
left upon a whole nation so indelible an impression of 
imaginary services — an impression which continues to the 
present day in their fireside lore, their local traditions, the 
warm-hearted devotion and gratitude ; which has left also 
its lasting memorial in the ancient names of hills and head- 
lands, towns and villages, churches and monasteries through- 
out the country. ' ' ^ 

Nor is this all. There are certain writings which claim 
to have come from the very pen of Saint Patrick. One is 
a hymn, which gives us no historic information, but is of 
great value in a spiritual light. It will be found in chapter 
ix. , with the reasons for giving it a place in this volume. 
The only others which I assume to be genuine are the Con- 
fessw Patricu, and the Epistola ad Coroticum, Some 
writers include them both under either one of these titles, 
or refer to them as the " Cotton MS." It is only in their 

* Todd. St. Patrick, preface. 



12 PREFACE, 

simpler, and doubtless earliest form, that they are thus ad- 
mitted ; what is evidently interpolated by later hands is 
almost all rejected. They are quite universally admitted to 
be authentic and genuine by Protestant historians, some of 
whom also give a place to certain tracts, such as De Trihus 
Hahitaciilis. The evidence in favour of the Confession is 
somewhat stronger than that for the Epistle; but both are 
adopted, for the following reasons : 

1. Their antiquity. They are older than any of the lives 
extant, and they are largely quoted in almost all the 
biographies. If one goes to a Romish book-stall, he may 
find, under their titles, a mixture of facts and ridiculous 
fables. But the older copies come to us with a more honest 
face and better credentials. About the close of the eighth 
century a copy of the Confession was transcribed into the 
collection entitled the Book of Armagh. The copyist com- 
plains that the original was becoming quite obscure, which 
is no slight evidence of authenticity. At the close are the 
words, " Thus far the volume which Patrick wrote with his 
own hand. ' ' 

This copy is much shorter than those found in later 
manuscripts. Did the transcriber condense or abridge the 
copy before him ? So thought Dean Graves, for an et cetera 
sometimes occurs. But this might only mean that the 
original was dim by reason of its age, or that only the lead- 
ing facts of Patrick's life were intended to be preserved in 
the Armagh collection. It was not, however, the fashion 
of that age to abridge documents by leaving out the 
wonders and miracles ; the style was rather to leave out 
the sober facts of history. If we find in this copy chiefly 



PREFACE. 13 

facts, we may conclude that the miracles were not yet in- 
vented. The Epistle to Coroticus is not in the Book of 
Armagh. But it bears the marks of the same age and 
authorship. It also quotes the Latin version of the Bible, 
made before that of Jerome, which Patrick would hardly 
have used, for the older translation would have won his 
heart in his younger days. 

2. Their purity. They are not entirely free from errors ; 
but the errors are just such as we should expect to find in 
the writings of a man in the decline of the fifth century. 
An orthodox Augustine was a rare being at a little earlier 
period. But the older copies of these writings are free 
from ridiculous legends of miracles and saint-worship. As 
such fables are contained only in later copies, we may infer 
that they were foisted in by the makers and mongers of 
huge fictions. Of the Confession, Neander says: "The 
work bears in its simple, rude style an impress that 
corresponds entirely to Patrick's stage of culture. There 
are to be found in it none of the traditions which, perhaps, 
proceeded only from English monks [after the Anglo-Saxon 
invasion in the twelfth century] ; nothing wonderful, except 
what may be explained on ps3^chological principles. All 
this vouches for the authenticity of the piece. ' ' ^ Neander 
knew the edition of Sir James Ware ; that in the Book of 
Armagh is still purer. I have consulted the Liber Ard- 
meachce in Sir William Bentham's Irish Antiquarian Be- 
searches. 

3. Their design. It was not to prop up certain theories 
of church government. They were not written in the interest 

* Hist. Ch. Church, ii. p. 122, note. 



14 PREFACE. 

of any party, certainly'- not that of the Roman power. Such 
a purpose is manifest only in some of the later interpola- 
tions, thrust in when it was thought desirable to make the 
people believe that Ireland had received her great bishop 
and her Christianity directly from the banks of the Tiber. 
Dr. Todd says of the Confession, especially : " If it be a 
forgery, it is not easy to imagine with what purpose it 
could have been forged." ^ If a " pious fraud," it was by 
one who thought it important to assume the name and to 
get forth the experiences of Patrick in accordance with 
Scripture. Would such a man forge such a document ? 

The avowed object was to show why Patrick felt called to 
preach the gospel to the Irish people ; to declare that he 
was not sent by man, but by the Lord ; to furnish evidence 
that God had approved of his mission and labours ; to record 
some of his experiences; to "make known God's grace 
and everlasting consolation, and to spread the knowledge 
of God's name in the earth." He wished in his old age " to 
leave it on record after his death, for his sons whom he 
had baptized in the Lord.'* In the proper places I have 
referred to this work as a defence of himself and his mis- 
sion, and to the Epistle as a noble appeal for Christian 
rights and liberty. 

4, Their scriptural character. Not the "fathers," but 
the inspired writers are quoted. "They abound in simple 
statements of Gospel truth ; but there cannot be discovered 
in them a single one of those doctrines invented in later 
times, and set forth as necessary to salvation, in the Creed 
of Pope Pius IV. The Scriptures are treated by him with 
'^^SaintPatrick, p. 347. 



PREFACE, 15 

deep reverence, as infallible and sufficient. In support of 
his teaching, Patrick appeals to no other authority than to 
that of the wiitten Word ; and in the few chapters of his 
Confession alone there are thirty-five quotations from the 
Holy Scriptures." "^ 

5. The honesty, humility and gratitude everywhere ap- 
parent. The Confession ' ' is altogether such an account of 
himself as a missionary of that age, circumstanced as Saint 
Patrick was, might be expected to compose." Says Dr. 
Todd : "Its Latinity is rude and archaic. ' ' Its tone is : 
* ' I, Patrick, a sinner, a rustic, the least of all the faithful — ' * 
" a poor, sinful, despicable man — " not at all " on a level 
with the apostles — " "appointed a bishop in Ireland, I 
certainly confess that, by the grace of God, I am what I 
am." 

Yet here an objection has been urged. "Who can 
believe," asks Casimir Oudin, "if Patrick was a man of 
learning and celebrity in the fifth century, that he could 
have written in a semi-Latin and barbarous style?" But 
it is not claimed that he was a man of learning, educated 
on the Continent, and passing thirty-five years in monas- 
teries. Such a view is not consistent with what we know 
of the man. We should expect his pen to move in a rude 
style. The very objection is rather one of the strongest 
arguments for the authenticity of these writings. "The 
rude and barbarous Latinity" does not appear in the tracts 
concerning the "Three Habitations" and the "Twelve 
Abuses of the Age ;" one of which has been attributed to 

^Ohurcli of St. Patrick, by the Eev. John Wilson, Belfast, 1S60, 
This is a valuable tract. 



16 PREFACE, 

Augustine of Hippo, and the otlier to Cyprian. The 
writer's own account is that he could not write elegantly, 
for he had not been a student from infancy, and he had 
been so long among a rude people that his speech had been 
changed to another tongue. In our times well-educated 
missionaries in foreign lands, grown familiar with a foreign 
tongue, can appreciate his difficulty. He did not write as a 
monk, but as a missionary. 

6. The neglect into which the older form of these writings 
fell is some evidence of their truth. They did not serve 
the purposes of a Church which has coolly laid claim to 
all the saintly characters from the time of Abel to the 
beginning of the fifteenth century. She has swelled the 
catalogue of saints, but she has never been content with the 
original records of good men. She has added to them 
whatever suited her purpose, and cast into the shade the 
original documents. Thus has she done wdth the Holy 
Scriptures, How much has she added to the first simple 
accounts of Mary and Peter, and even our Lord ! Her very 
neglect of the original records is an argument for their 
authenticity. It sets theto apart from the legends which 
were manufactured in her interest. It distinguishes the 
true coin from the cheap counterfeit, the latter having 
become very profitable to Rome. Her authors have not 
been content to publish these unvarnished writings of an 
honest Christian missionary. There was not enough of the 
wonderful, the monkish, the Romish element in them. 
They were cast into a dark corner, according to her manner 
of putting to silence the witnesses of truth. The real 
Patrick has been slumbering his thousand years. It is 



PREFACE, 17 

time for him to rouse, and in rising up he will throw off 
the vast heaps of superstitions piled upon him to keep 
him quiet. 

Here, then, is a footing upon these ancient documents. 
Assuming their genuineness, we may be guided to some 
knowledge of the life, the labours and doctrines of Patrick. 
What agrees with them we shall accept from all sources 
within reach ; what is inconsistent is rejected. 

Among the oldest of the ' ' Lives' ' is the brief Hymn of 
Fiacc, or St. Fiech, who seems to have been a disciple of 
Patrick. If he composed such a poem, he may have 
sung it as a converted bard ; but a later hand is apparent in 
a few miracles added to it. I have before me a tri-form 
copy, containing the original Irish, the Latin version of 
Colgan, and an English translation by the anonymous author 
of a Life of St. Patrick. * The collection of ' ' Lives' ' in 
Colgan' s Trias Thaumaturga is valuable, if defects in 
quality can be made good by superabundance in quantity, 
the THpartite Life being the only one worthy of much 
regard. The reading of Joceline's Life of St. Patrick 
almost disgusted me with the subject, but it was refreshing 
to find one of the latest Komish writers saying, *' How 
derogatory from common sense have the biographers of our 
saint acted, and particularly Joceline ! ' ' Our modern 
author, however, is not clear of the same fault. 

Almost all my previous researches might have been 
spared had I received at an earlier day the work entitled 
St. Patrick^ Apostle of Ireland; a Memoir of his Life 
and Mission^ with an introdicctory dissertation on some early 

* Baltimore: John Murphy, 1861. 
2 



18 PREFACE. 

usages of the Church in Ireland . . . hy James Henthom 
Todd^ D. D. To this learned work by an Episcopal clergy- 
man, and ' ' an antiquarian declared to be thoroughly versed 
in Irish history, ' ' my indebtedness is gratefully acknowledged. 
His brother, the Rev. Wm. Gr. Todd, in his Church of St 
Patrick^ has proved that the ancient Church of Ireland was 
independent of Home. 

Other works have been consulted, such as the Historia 
Britonum of Nennius; Ecclesiasticae Historiae Gentes An- 
glorum, of Bede ; Britannicarum Ecclesiarum Antiquitates, 
of Ussher; Annales Ecclesiastici of Baronius; Memoires 
Ecclesiastique, par M. de Tillemont; Le Grand Diction- 
naire, par M. Louis Moreri ; Biographic Universelle ; An- 
nales Hiberniae, ab Thoma Carve ; Collectanea de Bebus 
Hibernicis, by Charles Valiancy ; Les Moines d' Occident, 
par le Comte de Montalembert ; Alban Butler's Lives of the 
Saints; Ledwich's Antiquities of Ireland; Annals of Ire- 
land, by the Four Masters; Neander's Memorials of Chris- 
tian Life ; Ecclesiastical Histories of Ireland, by Brenan, 
Carew, Lanigan and Wordsworth; Sir James Ware's His- 
tory and Antiquities of Ireland; McLauchlan's Early Scot- 
tish Church ; Soames' Latin Church during iVnglo-Saxon 
Times ; Lappenberg's History of England under the Anglo- 
Saxon Kings ; the several Histories of Ireland by Keating, 
Macgeoghan, Moore, Haverty, O'Halloran and O'Connor; 
and the General Histories of the Christian Church by 
rieury, Neander, Mosheim, Kurtz, Cave and Collier. 

I have not discussed at tedious length the question of 
Saint Patrick's birth-place, but have frequently pointed out 
evidences that it was on the Clyde. The opinion that it 



PREFACE. 19 

was Boulogne-sur-Mer, in Gaul, seems to be quite modern. 
Its chief supporter is Dr. Lanigan, who ingeniously brings 
forward no little learning on the subject, but all his trim- 
ming of antiquated names can hardly satisfy us that his 
Bononia Tarvannse was Patrick's Bonavem TaberniaB, 
where the great missionary tells us his father dwelt. We 
can find half a dozen places in Gaul once called Bononia, ^ 
and a score of Taberniae ; and possibly by Dr. Lanigan' s 
mode of reasoning we might show that Saint Patrick was 
born at the Three Taverns [Tres Tabernas)^ where Paul met 
his Christian brethren. This would bring the "Apostle of 
Ireland' ' near enough to Borne, in his childhood, to please 
the most ardent papal admirers. The opinion that he was 
born on the banks of the Clyde, or somewhere in North 
Britain, is supported by Fiacc and his scholiast, the author 
of St. Declan's Life, Probus, Sigibert (quoted by Ussher), 
Cave, Ware, Joceline, Fleury, Tillemont, Bailet, Albaa 
Butler, Macgeoghan, Baronlus (?), Moreri, Spottiswoode, 
Camden, Collier, Lappenberg, Thorpe, Henry, Gibbon, 
Neander, Milner, Wordsworth, J. C. Robertson, Hether- 
ington, D'Aubigne, McLauchlan, Giesseler, Kurtz, Mo- 
sheim, Todd, Beeves and other writers, both Protestant and 
Boman Catholic. 

Truth and fact have been most earnestly sought, and the 
attempt is to present them intelligibly and impartially. I 
have given to many statements the heavy shading of a 
doubt, and I only ask for them the benefit of a probability. 
A plain mark has been put upon every silly legend, which 
it seemed proper to notice in order to make clear the points 
^j^Anthon's Class. Diet. 



20 PREFACE. 

of the case, or to bring upon some popular superstition its 
deserved ridicule. 

If the name of Saint Patrick were less known ; if it had 
fallen into obscurity ; if we had to rescue it from oblivion, 
as that of Hyppolitus or that of Paleario has been rescued, 
and if he were not so commonly portrayed in colours that 
do not at all suit his complexion, — ours would be an easier 
task. It would be less difficult to meet the popular views. 
In telling the truth about him we must come in conflict 
with the common opinions. Men will take down their 
histories and cyclopedias and read the usual stoiy, shake 
their heads, call in question what we relate, and examine 
the subject no further ; I can only ask them to follow up 
my references. 

If any one attached to the Roman Catholic Church shall 
read this volume, let him not suppose that we dishonour 
the great man whom he reveres as the patron saint of all 
Irishmen. Far from it ; we would have him honored in his 
true character. If such a reader will adopt the ancient 
religion of Saint Patrick, he will find himself almost a 
modern Protestant. At all events, he will go to the Word 
of God as the only authority in matters of faith, and the 
only source of light to guide him in the way of life. It is 
not so much our aim to set forth the man Patrick as it 
is to illustrate the principles by which he was controlled in 
the labours that have made his name renowned. The record 
of his toils and triumphs ought to be instructive, if a late 
writer says truly, "From all that can be learned of him, 
there never was a nobler Christian missionary than Patrick. ' * 

Chicago, III. W. M. B. 



SAINT PATRICK. 




CHAPTER I. 

HOME AND PARENTAGE. 

'p^(i^ cottages^ near little towns, great men have 

been born. God makes his earnest workers 

of dust, that he may have all the glory. 

When looking for the birth-place of Saint 

Patrick we turn to Scotland. The voyager on the 

deck of the vessel that steams up the Clyde will 

have his eye upon a lonely, rugged rock that rises 

almost three hundred feet above the water, and is 

now crowned with a castle. It was once called 

Alcluyd,* the Eock of the Clyde. It gave its 

name to a fort on its top and a town at its foot. 

There, on their own frontier, the ancient Britons 

resisted the Northern Scots and Picts. Border 

strifes made it a place of death. The old songs 

tell of the rivers running red with blood. It 

* Alcluith, Alcluaid, Alcluada, Alclyde. In Ossian's poems 
it is Balclutha. See my preface. 

21 



22 SAINT PATRICK. 

seems to have been a stronghold of the Romans, 
who built one of their walls from Alcluyd 
across the country to the Frith of Forth. To 
them the Britons yielded and looked for defence 
during several generations. It is supposed that 
these Romanized Britons united with the tribes of 
Southern Scotland and formed the Cumbrian 
league, or the kingdom of Strathclyde. Their 
capital was Alcluyd, which they named Dunbriton, 
"the hill of the Britons/^ whence the present 
name of Dumbarton. Four miles from it, toward 
Glasgow, on the line of the old Roman wall, is 
the modern town of Kilpatrick, which claims to 
be the birth-place of Saint Patrick. The Christian 
year 397 is the most probable date of his birth. 

The account given in his name is this: "I, 
Patrick, a sinner, the rudest and the least of all 
the faithful, and the most despicable among most 
people, had for my father Calpurnius, a deacon, son 
of the late Potitus, a presbyter, who was of the 
town of Bonavem Tabernise; for he had a cottage 
(or farm) in the neighbourhood where I was cap- 
tured/^* 

^ Confessio Patricii. We have stated in the preface the 
reasons for presuming the Confession, in its oldest form, to be 
geuuine. 



SAINT PATRICK, 23 

He does not tell us where he was born; he 
simply relates that his father dwelt at Bonavem, 
where he also Avas living when taken captive. But 
why mention the place as his home, unless he was 
a native of it? The plain inference is that he Avas 
born tliere. It is difficult to identity Bonavem 
Tabernise with any ancient town. To no one 
probably was this Latin name given; it is simply 
the Latin translation of some name which Avas 
foreign to the language of the Romans. Perhaps 
the words mean a town at the river'' s mouth, "^ near 
the tents (tabernise) or shops of the Roman army. 
The Hymn of Fiacc begins thus: "Patrick was 
born at JSTempthur/^ The old commentator upon 
it says of Nempthur, "It is a city in North 
Britain, viz. Alcluada." According to the ancient 
and best traditions, we may assume that Saint 
Patrick was born in a cottage not far from Alcluyd, 
and under its protection. 

Butj feeling that he was unworthy of any birth- 
place, he did not clearly define it. In his old age 
he thought rather of his home in the heavens. He 
might have said, as did Severinus, one of the first 

* BoUj mouth ; aven, river. — CeltiG Diet Nempthur may- 
come from Nenij a river, and Twr, a tower — the castle on the 
river. 



24 SAINT FA THICK. 

missionaries along the banks of the Danube, in the 
fifth century : '' What pleasure can it be to a ser- 
vant of God to specify his home, or his descent, 
since by silence he can so much better avoid all 
boasting ? I would that the left hand knew noth- 
ing of the good works which Christ grants the 
right hand to accomplish, in order that I may be a 
citizen of the heavenly country. Why need you 
know my earthly country, if you kgow that I am 
truly longing after the heavenly ? But know this, 
that God has commissioned me to live among this 
heavily oppressed people/^ 

The admiring monks sought to glorify Saint 
Patrick by inventing for him a royal lineage. 
They ran it back to Britus, or Britanus, the sup- 
posed ancestor of the Britons. But he had no 
such vain imaginations. It was enough for him to 
tell us of his grandfather. We are glad to know 
that he was the grandson of Potitus,* the presbyter. 
The blood was good. If he had thought that his 
grandfather had disgraced himself by marriage,t he 

* " Son of Odisse^' is added on the margin of the Book of 
Armagh, in the hand of the original scribe. In Fiacc's 
Hymn he is called " the Deacon Odisse." 

t In the year 314, the council of Neocaesarea decreed that 
the presbyter who married should forfeit his standing. 



SAINT PATRICK, 25 

would hardly have mentioned him as a minister 
of God's word. He would have been silent about 
his clerical ancester. It seems that he did not 
believe in the celibacy of the clergy, even in his 
old age. Here is some proof of the truth and the 
antiquity of '' the Confession.'^ If it had been in- 
vented and written in more papal times, Saint 
Patrick would not have been made the grandson 
of a presbyter; not if that presbyter held the rank 
of a Roman priest.* The book must be older than 
the notion that the early Churches of Scotland 
and Ireland wxre controlled by the bishop of 
Rome. 

Of Potitus we learn nothing more, except that 
his office was held in high esteem in his times. 
Martin of Tours declared, at a public entertain- 
ment, that the emperor was inferior in dignity to a 
presbyter.f This may have been a boast, yet 
without vaunting the early Christians of Scotland 

Stronger ground was gradually taken, until, about the year 
400, the bishop of Rome forbade the marriage of the clergy. 
But yet, in remoter regions, his bull was not closely heeded. — • 
Neander's Ch. Hist ii. 147. 

■^ Some writers call Potitus a pnesL Thus Innes, Brenan, 
Carew and other Romanists. The original word is rendered 
presbyter by such prelatists as Todd, Soames and Ussher. 

t Mosheim, Cent. V. chap. ii. 



26 SAINT PATRICK. 

regarded the presbyter as a bishop. The same was 
true in England and Ireland. Even in the tenth 
century^ Elfric, a Saxon bishop, wrote thus of the 
orders of church officers, putting the presbyter first: 
'' There is no difference between him and the bishop, 
except that the bishop is appointed to confer ordi- 
nation, which, if every presbyter should do, would 
be committed to too many. Both, indeed, are one 
and the same order.^^ Pryne says of the early 
Britons : " They maintain the parity of the 
bishops and presbyters. ^^ In Eastern lands men 
began to put a difference between these officers. 
'^Yet a Chrysostom and a Jerome still asserted 
the primitive equal dignity of the presbyters and 
the bishops, very justly believing that they found 
authority for this in the New Testament.^^* 

Potitus may have been a Culdee presbyter. His 
Latin name does not prove that he was a Roman, 
sent out with the army from Rome as a mission- 
ary to the Britons. Native names were often 
Latinized by the historians. f It is more likely 
that he was a Briton by birth. Perhaps he studied 

* Neander's Ch. Hist. vol. ii. p. 155, American ed. 

f Succath was changed to Patriciiisi Two native ministers 
in the sixth century, near Loch Ness, are called Emchadus 
and Virolecus. 



\ ' 

^ 



SAINT PA TRICK. 27 

the Scriptures and prayed in the Culdee cell at 
Alcluyd, and at its door preached to the people. 

To us there is something quite romantic about 
the Guil, hil, or cell of the early Christians in 
Scotland and Ireland. There is scarcely a doubt 
that it gave name to the Cuildich, or Culdees, To 
them there was a sacredness about it as they re- 
treated to it in some lonely wood, narrow valley, 
or ruo:o:ed ravine. It was not the abode of a 
monk ; it was the resort of a missionary. It was 
his ^^study/^ where he prepared for preaching. 
Its origin we cannot discover ; perhaps it was, at 
first, a refuge from enemies or a resort for prayer. 
It became the sacred place of the presence of God; 
almost the Holy of Holies, with its veil rent for 
the entrance of the Culdee worshipper. Its plan 
was carried with every missionary, and he chose 
the spot for his '^ celF' as the Hebrew did for the 
tabernacle. There was his sanctuary; there he 
wrestled with God in prayer; there the people 
might assemble with reverence to hear him preach. 
It was holy ground ; the burning bush was there 
in the desert. The cell develops into three forms — 
the oratory, the kirk and the college."^ At some 

■^ Princeton Keview, 1867. Article on ''The Culdee Monas- 
teries." 



28 SAINT PATRICK. 

period a cell, or kll, was located near the spot 
where Saint Patrick was born. It may have been 
close by the same cottage. There Potitus may 
have studied and prayed. There the people may 
have assembled for worship. There, it seems, a 
Culdee kirk, or church, grew up, which the people 
of later days called Kilpatrick, in honour of the 
great missionary, who was born at the place. Po- 
titus seems to have lived to a good old age, and 
been worthy of the respect of his grandson. It is 
some proof of his excellent family government that 
he reared a deacon. 

The deacon was Calpurnlus. "What sort of a 
deacon was he ? Some place him in " the third or 
lowest order of the ordained clergy.'^ Such 
^^ deacon's orders'' would savour of Rome, and 
give to Calpurnius the rank of a clergyman. 
If he was such a deacon, he was quite free from 
the Roman notions of celibacy, for he took a wife 
and reared a family. If a clergyman at all, he 
must have been a Culdee licentiate. It was held 
to be no sin for a Culdee minister to marry. But 
if he was a Culdee deacon, he was hardly a minis- 
ter, or a candidate for the ministry. The church 
of the Culdees seems to have been regulated after 
the Bible, and not after the Roman model. It ap- 



SAINT PATRICK. 29 

pears to have had deacons, elders and presbyters, 
and none of higher rank. Doubtless the early 
Culdees had no very perfect system of church 
government, but in what they did have, they 
sought to follow ^^the order of the primitive 
Church/^ Dwelling among quarrelsome tribes, 
and in danger of persecutions, they gave them- 
selves to preaching Christ and peace, rather than 
to questions and modes of government.* Cal- 
purnius may have been a deacon of the church at 
Alcluyd. 

Another office is said to have been held by Cal- 
purnius. If a certain ancient letter came from the 
hand of Saint Patrick, he says, " I was of a family 
respectable according to the flesh, my father having 
been a decurio. I gave up my nobility for the 
good of others, that I might be a missionary.^^f 
The decurio was a magistrate and counsellor in the 
Eoman colonies. The office conferred a high rank 
on those who held it. These officers " were mem- 
bers of the court, or counsellors of the city, and 
could not be ordained [to the Christian ministry]. 
By virtue of their estates they were tied to the 
offices of their country. They must have a certain 

* Hetherington's Hist. Church of Scotland. Chapter!, 
f The Epistle concerning Coroticus. See my preface. 



30 SAINT PATRICK. 

amount of property/'* Such was the law of Con- 
stantine for the more wealthy decuriones. " The 
fact that Calpurnius is said to have held that office 
may perhaps tend to show" us that he belonged to 
one of the Koman provinces of Great Britain, 
rather than to Bretagne Armorique. It is a mis- 
take to suppose that a decurio was necessarily a 
military officer/^f Such a man must have had no 
little authority over the Britons of Strathclyde. 
The Romans allowed ^^ governors of the native 
races/^ especially at Alcluyd. When the Romans 
were called home to resist the Goths, they must 
have left very much of their power in the hands 
of the magistrate. But Calpurnius ruled in the 
State like a good deacon of the Church. 

Traditioii informs us that the mother of Saint 
Patrick was Conchessa. Various writers call her 
the sister of Martin, archbishop of Tours and the 
founder of monasteries in Western Europe. A 
candid Romanist thinks that this opinion is refuted 
by the silence of the ancient annalists. "For it 
cannot be supposed that a connection so honour- 
able, and which, if it existed, must have been 
generally known, could have been passed over in 

"^ Bingham^s Ecclesiastical Antiquities, book iv. 4. 
t Todd's Saint Patrick. Dublin, 1864, p. 354. 



SAINT PATRICK, 31 

silence by persons who must have been eager to 
mention whatever could exalt the character of 
Saint Patrick with posterity/^* In the tract on 
" the mothers of the saints in Ireland/ 'f she is 
represented as a Briton. We may believe that she 
was "a woman superior to the majority of her 
sex/^ and that she endeavoured to instil into the 
heart of her son the doctrines of Christianity.;}: 

Such a family, in which there was a presbyter 
and a deacon, dwelling on the banks of the Clyde, 
could not well be the solitary Christians of that 
country. There must have been many others. 
Whence their religion, and how long had it existed 
in Scotland ? 

Missionaries may have followed in the footsteps 
of the Roman army, the sword preparing the way 
for the cross. For four hundred years after Christ 
the Romans held sway over many parts of Eng- 
land and Southern Scotland, and the door was open 
for teachers of the faith, however severely some of 
the emperors persecuted them. Yet little seems 
to have been done. The native people hated the 

■^ An Ecclesiastical History of Ireland, by the Eight Eev. 
P. J. Carew, p. 52. 

f Attributed to ^ngus the Ciildee, of the ninth century. 
X D'Aubigne's Hist, of Kef. Vol. v. chap. i. 



82 SA INT PA TRICK. 

invaders ; they were not likely to give ear to 
preachers who came from the Roman Empire. 
Missionaries from Rome would have taught certain 
Koman errors, such as the celibacy of the clergy, 
prelacy and submission to the bishop of Rome. 
We must not forget that Rome, in the first Christian 
centuries, was far purer than she became after the 
seventh ; the great errors had not grown up : still, 
she had perverted many doctrines and practices 
before the Roman army left Britain. If we found 
these peculiar errors among the Christian Britons 
and Scots at an early day, we should conclude that 
they had been taught by Roman missionaries. Wc 
do not find them ; we find a much purer form of 
Christianity ; and our conclusion is, that they first 
received the gospel from a different quarter. 

Ships sailed to Britain from Eastern lands where 
the Greek language prevailed. They came from 
the harbours of cities where the apostles had 
preached. On their decks may have been Chris- 
tian merchants and missionaries from Greece and 
Asia Minor. The one class could supply funds, 
the other could give the gospel to the Scots and 
Britons. We may suppose that such teachers of 
the faith gathered a few people about them and told 
them of Jesus who was crucified for them. All 



SAINT PATRICK, 33 

wondered ; some believed. The number of hearers 
increased. Little bands celebrated the dying love 
of Christ. The Druids shook their heads in 
anger ; the people were forsaking them ; their craft 
was in danger; they cried out against the new 
doctrines. They claimed to be the only religious 
teachers and the law-makers. They muttered 
their dark suspicions to the chieftains and kings. 
Persecution arose. The little flocks were scattered. 
They sought refuge in narrower valleys. The 
teachers hid in closer retreats. They made them 
cells for prayer and study, and became Culdees. 
In some such manner, we may suppose, Christianity 
was first planted in Scotland and the northern part 
of Britain, and the Culdees arose. * Before the 
end of the second century there appear to have 
been many bands of Christians north of the Clyde 
and the Eoman Wall. In the year 234, Origen 
wrote in Greek, " The power of God, our Saviour, 
is even with them who in Britain are shut out from 

■^ Another opinion is, that Southern Britain first received the 
missionaries from Asia Minor and Greece, or from the churches 
of Lyons and Marseilles, which were of the Grecian type ; and 
that under such persecutions as that of Diocletian many of 
these early British Christians fled to Scotland and Ireland, 
where they took refuge in cells and became known as the 
Culdees. — Buchanan, Berum Scot. Hist, 



34 SAINT PATRICK. 

our world.'' About the same time Tertullian said 
" that parts of the British Isles, not reached by 
the Romans, were made subjects to Christ/' This 
Avas scarcely all rhetoric. We know that early in 
the fifth century Rome sent '^ bishops" to the " Scots 
believing in Christ/' She did it as if it were a 
new thing ; without her aid the Scots had believed. 
They continued to believe and increase. They re- 
jected her '' bishops" until forced to accept them in 
the twelfth century. In their churches was a purer 
faith. "These churches were formed after the 
Eastern type ; the Britons [and Scots] would have 
refused to receive the type of that Rome whose 
yoke they detested." * 

We find in Ninian a specimen of an early Briton 
Christian. Perhaps he w^as known to Potitus ; 
they were of the same kingdom of Strathclyde. 
He was born about the year 360. His parents 
were Christians and early devoted him to the 
Christian ministry. He loved his associates, 
abstained from jests, gave his hours to study and 
closely searched the Holy Scriptures. He was 
sparing of words, courteous in manners, moderate 
at the table and reserved in public. The body was 
ruled by the spirit that dwelt in it. He was marked 



SAINT PATRICK. 35 

as a young man of warm zeal, deep humility and 
dauntless courage. Having passed through the 
schools of his own country, and still eager for 
knowledge, he went to Rome. 

Ailred tells us that when Ninian came to Rome, 
the blessed youth wept over the relics of the 
apostles and gave himself to their care. If he 
did, he had no suspicion that a gross deception was 
practiced upon him. The '' pope'^ received him as 
a son. He was thereupon handed over to certain 
teachers, w^ho well knew how to manage a simple- 
hearted stiident. He soon discovered that his ow^n 
people did not understand the Scriptures as men 
int<?rpreted them at Rome. He was led to think 
that the Briton Christians were greatly in error, 
but on what points we are not informed. Doubt- 
less they had simpler forms of worship ; they had 
less regard for relics, outward rites, the sign of the 
cross, clerical rules and tonsure, festival days, 
liturgies and higher orders of clergy ; they did not 
regard the bishop of Rome as the successor of 
St. Peter, nor as the bond of unity in the Christian 
Church. They held Christ as their master and the 
only King in Zion. The eyes of Ninian were 
blinded. He thought that his countrymen had not 
fully come up to the faith ; he did not see that 



36 SAINT PATRICK, 

Rome had begun to depart from it. He resolved 
to impart his new ideas to his brethren. The story 
is that the Roman bishop ordained him as " the 
first apostle'' to his people, and sent him forth with 
his benediction. 

When Ninian returned to his own country, he 
was received with great demonstrations of joy. 
The people gathered about him. They held him 
as one of the prophets. They praised Christ for 
what they saw and heard. They were not heathen, 
and yet ^^the first apostle to his own people'' had 
come! Rome ignored the former teachers and 
presbyters: she now sent a ^'bishop." But they 
looked upon him as a follower of Christ and of 
his fathers. It is related that on his homeward 
way he had visited Martin of Tours, studied 
architecture, and brought with him a company of 
builders. A spot was chosen in the southern part 
of Galloway, near a deserted Roman camp, and 
the ral lying-point of a Caledonian tribe. It was 
not far from the seat of a Culdee establishment. 
There a church was built of bright white stone ; 
hence its name, Candida Casa, or Whitherne.* 

* Now Whithorn. The town of this name is on the main 
shore. Near it is an island, which '' has some remains of a very 
ancient small church, believed to have been one of the earliest 



SAINT PATRICK. 37 

^^ There/' says his biographer^ " the candle being 
placed in its candlestick, it began to give forth its 
light, with heavenly signs to those who were in the 
house of God, and its graces radiating, those who 
were dark in their mind were enlightened by the 
bright and burning word of God, and the frigid 
were w^armed/' We reject the miracles ascribed to 
him by Ailred, who says they are "credible only 
by such as believe that nothing is impossible to 
the faithful/^ He seems to have laid aside his 
Roman notions, and assumed no high prelatic 
powers. He was doubtless an earnest missionary, 
labouring more to make converts to Christ than to 
Rome. In the wilds of Galloway he taught sound 
doctrine and scriptural discipline. " He opened 
his mouth with the word of God, through the grace 
of the Holy Spirit,'' says Ailred. " The faith is 
received, error is put away, the [heathen] temples 
are destroyed, churches are erected : men rush to 
the fountain of saving cleansing — ^the rich and the 
poor alike, young men and maidens, old men and 
children, mothers with their infants; renouncing 
Satan and all his works and pomps, they are 
joined to the family of believers by faith, and 

stone structures of its class in Scotland." — Nelson^s Handbook 
to Scotland, 



38 SAINT PA TRICK, 

word, and s'acraments.'^ Such was his work 
among the Southern Picts. Perhaps he extended 
his labours north of the Roman Wall. Who 
knows but that he visited Alcluyd, lodged with 
Calpurnius, filled the lad Patrick with wonder, and 
talked late into the night with the venerable Po- 
titus ? Who knows but that this aged presbyter 
convinced him of Rome's advance in error, and 
confirmed him in the ancient faith of the Culdees ? 
He seems to have done little for Rome and 
much for Christ. At a ripe age he died in peace. 
More than a score of Scottish churches were named 
in honour of this zealous missionary. Rome 
canonized him ; it had been better if she had re- 
turned to his doctrines. That he was free from 
error we do not assert. We have endeavoured to 
sketch the man,* that we might have before us the 
portrait of a Christian Briton, who lived in the 
time of Saint Patrick's youth. No great mission- 
ary was more likely to influence the mind of the 
grandson of Potitus. 

^ Consult Bede's Eccl. Hist., McLauclilan's Early Scottish 
Church, The Spottiswoode Miscellany, Meander's Church 
History, 



CHAPTER II 

THE YOUNG CAPTIVE. 



E may imagine the deacon Calpurnius walk- 
ing solemnly by the side of the pale Con- 
()^?y^ chessa, bearing an infant son in his arms, 



c^ ^ 



e) and turning to a fountain* near to a Culdee 
cell ; then joining fervently in the simple services 
of worship, and praying silently that the Lord will 
bless his neighbours who gaze upon the scene ; then 
listening to what is said of God's holy covenant 
with his people and their little ones, and holding 
forth his child to receive the token of its surrender 
to the Father, the seal of its redemption by the 
Son and the symbol of its renewal by the Holy 
Ghost. We almost see the reverent presbyter take 
his grandson and with the words of Christ apply 
to him the waters of baptism, give him the kiss 
of peace,t place him in the arms of the tearful 

* Fountains and wells seem to have been used at an early 
period for baptism ; they were afterward held sacred in Scotland 
and Ireland. 

f An ancient custom. — Thackeray's Ancient Britain, vol. L 
198. 

39 



40 SAINT PA THICK, 

Conchessa, and lift his hands for the prayer and 

benediction. We are told that to this child was 

given the name of Succath in his baptism. At a 

later day he was called Patrick.* 

In this we have supposed nothing more than 

may have been true. But the story-tellers of the 

Middle Ages imagined things that are hugely false, 

and made sad work of the life of Saint Patrick. 

Among their lying legends the facts are almost 

lost. Not content with marvels, they invented 

miracles. What wonders the child performed, even 

before he breathed ! He is but an infant when he 

makes the sign of the cross on the ground, and on 

the spot a fountain flows whose waters cure the 

blind. Is the water flooding his mother's floor ? 

He drops fire from his fingers and every drop is 

dried away. Does his aunt want a bundle of 

fagots ? The boy Patrick brings ice in his arms 

and makes a rousing fire with it. Does his sister 

Lupita fall and bruise her forehead? He heals 

the wounds in an instant. While herding the flock 

* Keating^s Hist, of Ireland. Fiacc's Hymn runs : " Succat 
his name at the beginning." Succat in old British means 
" the god of war," or " strong in war." An odd name, says 
Lanigan, for the child of a Christian deacon. Not more odd 
than for Palladius to bear a name derived from the heathen 
goddess Pallas.— Toc^f^'s St. Patrick, 363. 



SAINT PATRICK. 41 

he grows careless ; a wolf comes and steals one of 
the finest lambs. The lad is reproved, but he prays 
all night, and lo ! in the morning the roguish thief 
brings back the lamb, lays it unhurt at his feet, 
and then flees to the woods ! Thus we might go 
on heaping up the nonsense found in the first 
thirteen chapters of a book written by Joceline, a 
monk of the twelfth century. No wonder that one 
Romish author rejects such legends as stories 
^' foisted in by the credulous writers of those dark 
ages, who were for heaping miracles upon the backs 
of their saints which the present times are not ex- 
pected to give credit to f^ and another declares that 
they are ^^ enough to rouse the indignation of every 
pious reader." It is high time for the Romanists 
to purge the old " Lives of the Saints'^ as 
thoroughly as the young Patrick is said to have 
cleaned the fortress and stables of the cruel lord of 
Dunbriton ; for the story is, that the tyrant ordered 
Patrick^s aunt to do the slavish job, but the lad 
came forward like a man, and by miracle made such 
a riddance of all trash that none was ever found 
afterward in the whole establishment. 

We must believe that the young Patrick had all 
the human nature of a boy. He was not a saint. 
His deeds were not holy. It is far more likely 



42 SAINT PATRICK, 

that he complained of his oatmeal porridge at 
breakfast, and ran away from his mother to the 
trout-streams to catch something better for dinner ; 
that when sent into town on an errand he took the 
'' Rock on the Clyde'^ in his way, and loitered for 
an hour on the top looking for savage Highland- 
ers ; that he threw snowballs at some wandering- 
Druid, or talked long with the Roman soldiers 
w^hen he ought to have been tending his father^s 
sheep. 

He was tauo;ht the holy commandments,'^ but 
he did not keep them. He was " warned for his 
salvation/' but he heeded not the preachers. '' I 
knew not the true God/' he said in his old age, as 
he looked back upon the days of his youth. He 
must have meant that he knew not God as his 
heavenly Father, nor Christ as his Saviour; he did 
not love him nor obey the truth. No doubt his 
parents taught him the way to be saved^ for he 
seems to have remembered the lessons of home in 
his captivity. His grandfather must have had a 
Bible, and taught Patrick to read it, as Ninian was 
taught. But he had no heart for the truth. '^ He 
was fond of pleasure, and delighted to be the 
leader of his youthful companions. In the midst 
* Confessio Patricii, near the beginning. 



SAINT PATRICK, 43 

of his frivolities he committed a serious fault." * 
What it was we know not ; it proves that he was 
not holy from his infancy — not ^^ always a Chris- 
tian/' as Alban Butler declares him to have been, f 
He was then fifteen years of age. 

It was not always safe for him to lead a troop of 
young friends down the Clyde to hold their sports 
on its banksj or to stroll up the glen and make 
merry with some jovial shepherd and his flock. 
For pirates often drew their boats into some cove, 
wandered over the hills, seized upon the playful 
children, carried them away to strange lands and 
sold them into slavery. ~With bolder steps they some- 
times marched into villages, slew the strong men, 
abused the aged, plundered the houses or set them 
on "fire, laid waste the gardens, stole the cattle and 
took off the children. As Sir Walter Scott says of 
the Danish pirates : ^^ They were heathens, and did 
not believe in the Bible, but thought of nothing 
but battle and slaughter and making plunder.'^ 
Most of the Roman soldiers had been called home; 
so few were left that they were not able to protect 
the people along the Clyde. 

One day a band of these robbers came like 

^ D'Aubign^. 

f Lives of the Saints, March 17. 



44 SAINT PATRICK. 

vultures upon the town, and, after every sort of 
outrage, they carried off Patrick and about two 
hundred of the villagers. The captives were placed 
in the boats,* and the prows were turned down 
the Clyde and toward Ireland. What sad thoughts 
in the mind of Patrick as he gazed back at the 
high rock so near his home ! What anger toward 
the pirates ! But he afterward saw a reason for it 
all ; the hand of God was laid severely upon him 
to correct his evil ways. '' I was taken captive, 
when I was nearly sixteen years old. I knew not 
the true God, and I was carried in captivity to 
Ireland, with many thousandsf of men, according 
to our deserts, because we had gone back from 
God, and had not kept his commandments, and 
were not obedient to our priests, who used to warn 
us for our salvation. And the Lord brought upon 
us the wrath of his displeasure, and scattered us 

' * Curachs, no doubt made of wicker and covered with ox- 
hides. They were used by the people of the British Isles 
long after the Norwegians showed them how to build small 
ships. 

f Not " many thousands" in his company, but '* many thous- 
ands" in a like condition of bondage, taken away at various 
times and to various countries. We read of British captives at 
Bome in the sixth century, of whom Gregory said, "Non 
Angli, sed angeli." 



SA INT PA TRICK. 45 

among many nations, even unto the ends of the 
earth/' * 

Who were those pirates ? AVere they Irishmen, 
led by Niall of the iSTine Hostages ? This daring 
corsair roved over the seas, and excelled in the 
slave-trade before, we suppose. Saint Patrick was 
born. Those who fix his birth before the year 387 
attribute the capture to Niall,t the ancestor of the 
O'Neills, and ^^ martial hero of the Irish/' Of 
him an ancient poet sings, that he, 

By force of arms, and martial skill, 
Subdued the rebels who opposed his right; 
A ad, as a pledge of their allegiance, 
Detained five hostages of noble blood ; 
And, to secure the homage of the Scots, 
He kept confined four hostages of note ; 
From whence this prince the ancient records call 
The Hero of the Nine Hostages. 

On one of his excursions for plunder he was 
shot with an arrow and died on the spot. He was 
certainly great enough to carry away Saint Patrick, 
whose supposed miraculous power was strangely 
wanting at the time. But he appears not to have 
lived long enough for such a deed. It is more 

^ Conf. Pat. 

f Keating, Lanigan, D'Aubign^, Wilson. 



46 SAINT PATRICK. 

likely that tlie captors were led by some other 
chieftain. When the Romans were leaving the 
Clyde, the poor Britons were at the mercy of their 
foes. The old wall was no defence. On neither 
side of the line did the gospel of peace reign. 
The Picts shouted, the Britons groaned, and the 
Irish ran in and took the spoils and the prey. 

There is another version of the story which 
merits a respectful notice. It is, that the capture 
was made in Brittany, in the North of France. 
Some writers, who think that Saint Patrick was 
not born near Boulogne, suppose that his parents 
left the Clyde and settled on the coast of Gaul.* 
The commentator on Place's Hymn gives the legend 
thus: *' This was the cause of the servitude of 
Patrick. His father, mother, brother and five 
sisters all went from the Britons of Alcluaid, across 
the Iccian sea southward, on a journey to the 
Britons of Letha. ... Then came seven sons 
of Sectmaide, king of Britain, in ships. . . . 
and they made great plunder on the Britons of 
Armoric Letha, where Patrick with his family 
was, and they wounded Calpurnius there, and 
carried off Patrick and Lupait [his sister] with 
them to Ireland, and sold them." 
•5^ So D'Aubign^. 



SAINT PATRICK. 47 

This story is usually supported by the fact that 
a colony of Northern Britons had lately settled in 
Gaul, giving to that region the name of Brittany, 
if indeed the Brittani had not dwelt there centuries 
before. It was at first a Roman military colony, 
consisting of British w^arriors. ^^ Though that 
country had from the earliest times^ by descent, 
language and Druidism^ been related to Britain, 
yet the new colonists, who were follow^ed by many 
others, both male and female, served unquestion- 
ably to bind more closely and to preserve the con- 
nection between Bretagne and the Britons of Wales 
and Cornwall. . . . But Britain was thereby de- 
prived of her bravest warriors, and thence the more 
easily became an early prey to foreign invaders. 
Scots, Picts and Saxons continued to trouble it.^^* 
This colony might have resisted the pirates more 
strongly than the dwellers on the Clyde. If 
Patrick had been there, he might have been safe ; 
if his parents w^ere fleeing thither for safety, he may 
have been captured on the w^ay. But the whole 
story seems to be founded in the wish to connect 
Saint Patrick with the Romans and the Roman 

* Lappenberg's Hist, of England under the Anglo-Saxon 
Kings, vol. i. pp. 7, 59 ; Thackeray's Ancient Britain, vol. ii, 
p. 72. 



48 SAINT PATRICK 

Church. The better authorities do not support it. 
The second, third and fourth '' Lives'^ in Colgan's 
collection make Patrick to have been captured 
^^near Alcluaid/' by a fleet of Irish pirates. 
About six years later he is found at home again 
with his parents in Britain, a country named as 
one entirely distinct from Gaul. 

In the Confession there is not a word to show 
that Saint Patrick had brothers and sisters. But 
on this subject the monks seem to have been quite 
inventive, placing on the family roll of Calpurnius 
a list of descendants long enough to supply two or 
three kingdoms with bishops, priests, monks and 
nuns. One sister was carried to Ireland and became 
the mother of seventeen bishops ! Another counted 
among her sons four bishops and three priests ; she 
was Limania, whose eldest son was Sechnall, a 
bishop, and the youngest, Lugna, a priest. There 
was perhaps a Sechnall or Secundinus, who wrote 
a poem upon the life of St. Patrick, one of the 
most ancient in existence. But who his mother 
was none can tell. 

A few years since, Dr. George Petrie * found on 

the '' Island of the Religious Foreigner,^^ in the 

■'^ Bound Towers and Ecclesiastical Architecture of Ireland, 
by George Petrie, p. 102 ; Todd's St. Patrick, p. 365. 



SAINT PATRICK. 49 

county of Galway, Ireland, a tomb- stone whose 
date can scarcely be later than the beginning of the 
sixth century. On it is this Celtic inscription : 
Lie Lugiiaedoii Max^lmene — ^^ The stone of Lugna, 
son of Limania." Perhaps it was raised over the 
grave of a nephew of Saint Patrick. He may have 
been a native of Britain^ gone as a Culdee mis- 
sionary to Ireland, had his cell on the little island, 
and there died ; whence the place was called '^ the 
Isle of the Religious Foreigner." For this there is 
one fossil fact, a mere name on a gravestone^ which 
happens to agree w^ith a line in a legend. But for 
the rest w^e have only fables, and Tillemont was 
safe in rejecting them all. 

The small boats which carried the young Patrick 
and his companions, with a weight of spoils, would 
be likely to make land at some near point. Leav- 
ing the Firth of the Clyde, a stmight course west 
would bring them upon the Antrim coast, just 
where tradition fixes the landing. This tends to 
show that the capture was not in Gaul, but at 
Alcluyd. It appear that Patrick was first sold to 
four brothers. Fiacc's hymn runs : 

''He was called Cathraige, 
For he served four families." * 

* Latin version by Colgan. 



50 SA INT PA TRICK. 

One of these brothers is said to have been 
Milchu, a savage master, a cruel king of Dalaradia, 
and a Druid. Not liking the joint-stock arrange- 
ment, and greatly pleased with the faithfuhiess of 
the slave, he bought the shares of his brothers and 
became sole possessor. Patrick might well prefer 
to serve one master rather than four, even if the 
one was a tyrant. 

At this point we have light from the Confession. 
It show^s that Patrick was sent daily into the fields 
to herd cattle ; that he watched them by night, in 
the rain, in the snows, and all the year long, and 
that these severe trials were to him a means of 
grace. He remembered happier days. He thought 
upon his sins. He felt that he was far from Christ, 
the true home of his soul. He recalled the teach- 
ings of God's servants, and the lessons learned in 
his father's house. The seed of truth, long buried 
in his heart, sprang up and grew. Not in vain 
had he been devoted to the Lord in his infancy, 
and taught how to pray ; not in vain w^ere his 
parents' prayers still renew^ed and ascending to the 
Great High Priest, who w^as touched with the feel- 
ing of their infirmities and his bitter endurances. 

'^ After I had come to Ireland," he says in the 
Confession, ^^ I was employed every day in tending 



^.1 INT PA TE ICK, 51 

sheep ; and I used to stay in the woods and on the 
mountain. I prayed frequently. The love and 
the fear of God and faith increased so much, and 
the spirit of prayer so grew within me, that I often 
prayed an hundred times in the day, and almost as 
often in the night. I frequently rose to prayer in 
the woods before daylight, in snow, and frost, and 
rain ; and I felt no evil, nor was there any sloth 
in me ; for, as I now see, the Spirit was burning 
within me. 

" And there the Lord opened my unbelieving 
mind, so that, even late, I thought of my sins, and 
my whole heart was turned to the Lord my God, 
who looked down upon my low condition, had pity 
on my youth and ignorance, and preserved me 
before I knew him, and before I knew good from 
evil, and guarded, protected and cherished me, 
as a father would a son. This I certainly know, 
that before God humbled me I was like a stone 
lying deep in the mire ; but when he came, who 
had all power to do it, he raised me in his 
mercy and put me on a very high place. Where- 
fore I must testify aloud, in order to make some 
return to the Lord for such great blessings, in time 
and in eternity, which no human reason is able 
to estimate.^' 



52 SAINT PATRICK, 

Such was the experience of young Patrick ; 
religion with him was deep heart-work. Its 
power came from the Lord ; the Holy Ghost im- 
parted the love and fear of God. Such was his 
account of his conversion, w^ritten in his old age. 
How he remembered those first convictions of sin 
and helplessness, the earnestness of those first 
prayers, the ardour of that first love, and all that 
blessedness ! He drew the portrait of a new con- 
vert without intending it. How much does it 
reveal ! If a painting by Raphael tells us the 
state of art among the Italians in his time, does 
not Saint Patrick's description of his own ex- 
perience tell us what religion was held to be in his 
days by the Irish Christians ? It was not ritual, 
but spiritual ; not a matter of forms, but of faith ; 
not penance, but repentance; not saint- worship, 
but the grateful adoration of God ; not priest -work, 
but heart- w^ork ; not a mere reform of the conduct, 
but a regeneration of the soul. Surely he was 
never the man that thousands of his adorers be- 
lieve him to have been ! That portrait would never 
have been drawn by a papist. The young man 
whom it represented, and the old man who drew 
it, were the same Patrick; and surely he never 
believed that a church must confer the salvation 



SAINT PATRICK. 53 

of Christ — that God's grace and Spirit must come 
through the hands of a priest! To what confes- 
sional did he go in the wilderness but that only 
one of God, the mercy-seat, the throne of grace? 
That was ever near him amid the rain, the snow, 
and the darkness. To whom could he go but unto 
Him who had the w^ords of eternal life? 

^'Such words as these/' says D'Aubigne, '^from 
the lips of a swineherd"^ in tlie green pastures of 
Ireland, set clearly before us the Christianity 
which in the fourth and fifth centuries Converted 
many souls in the British Isles. In after years 
Rome established the dominion of priests and 
salvation by forms, independently of the disposi- 
tions of the heart ; but the primitive religion of 
these celebrated islands was that living Christianity 
whose substance is the grace of Jesus Christ, and 
whose power is the grace of the Holy Ghost. The 
herdsman from the banks of the Clyde was then 
undergoing those experiences which so many 
evangelical Christians in those countries have since 
undergone. Evangelical faith^ even then, existed 
in the British Islands in the person of this slave, 
and of some few Christians born again, like him, 
from on high.'' 

* Quoting U^sher : porcorum pastor erat. 




CHAPTER III. 

THE ESCAPE. 

IX years wore away, but there seemed to be 
no promotion for Patrick. Twenty-two 
years of age, vigorous and enterprising, he 
thought of being something else than a 
herdsman. A heavenly Father^s correction had 
wakened him from his sleep of death to a higher 
life; the great Shepherd had a nobler work for him 
to do. He began to have dreams, as so many of 
God's servants have had in all ages, wondering 
what they meant, and whether a divine hand and 
voice were in them. It will not appear strange to 
most Christians that several of his dreams are re- 
corded in the Confession. Those who choose may 
treat them as legends, unworthy of credit; he 
seems to have thought they came from God. 

One night, as he tells us, he seemed to hear a 
voice saying, '^ Thy fasting is well ; thou shalt 
soon return to thy country." He waited, watched, 
but no way of return appeared. Again he dreamed, 
and the same voice said/ ^^ Behold, the ship is 



SAINT PATRICK. 65 

ready for you.'^ But he was told that it was far 
distant.* He did not feel bound to go to his 
master, tell him all, settle up affairs, shake hands 
and bid him farewell. If the cruel chief found 
that his favourite slave was missing some morning, 
he must make the best of it. The Lord was re- 
covering his stolen property. ^'I took to flight,^' 
he informs us, ^^ and left the man with whom I had 
been for six years. I w^ent in the power of the 
Lord, who directed my way for good, and I feared 
nothing until I came to the place where the ship 
lay. The ship was then clearing out, and I asked 
for a passage in her. The master of the vessel 
became angry and said, ^' Do not pretend to come 
with us." On hearing this I retired, for the pur- 
pose of going to the cabin where I had been re- 
ceived as a guest,t and while going thither I began 
to pray. But before I had finished my prayer, I 
heard one of the men crying out to me, '' Come 
back quickly, for these men are calling you." I 

■^ '' Two hundred miles," is the present reading in the Book 
of Armagh. But it is supposed to be an error of the tran- 
scriber. The scholiast on Fiacc's Hymn has it, "Sixty- 
miles, or, as others says, a hundred," a proof that there were 
various readings or traditions. — Todd^s St. Patrick, p. 367. 

f Or " to the hut where I used to dwell," at the risk of being 
ill-treated by his master. — TillcmoiU, 



56 SAINT PATRICK. 

returned at once. They said to me, ^^ Come, for we 
receive you in faith ; make friends with us, as you 
please !^^ 

He was surprised to hear them speak of faith, 
for he saw that they w^ere heathens, but he hoped 
they meant to say, '^ Come in the faith of Jesus 
Christ," or he hoped that they might come over to 
the faith of Christ. He went with them. They 
were three days* at sea, probably making for the 
coast of Scotland. The sea must have been rough, 
the course lost, the harbour missed and the vessel 
driven upon some desolate shore. For twenty- 
eight days they '^ wandered in a desert ;" a region 
laid waste by the ravages of the warlike tribes, or 
from which pirates had caused the natives to flee. 
They ran short of provisions. Patrick seems to 
have spoken to the sailors of the power of God, of 
prayer and of trust in his providence. Want 
would impress the lesson. 

^' What sayest thou. Christian ?" asked the leader 

of the party. ^' Thy God is great and all-powerful. 

* Dr. Lanigan brings Patrick from Dalaradia, full two hun- 
dred miles, to Eantry Bay, thence in three days to the 
coast of Gaul. He gives credit to a story that the fugitive had 
been seized by a wild Irishman and sold to certain sailors or 
merchants of Gaul. — Ecd. Hist., i. 150. The legends bandy 
him about as a slave and captive most wonderfully, 



SAINT PA TRICK. 57 

Why, then, canst thou not pray to him for us ? For 
we perish with hunger, and can find here no in- 
habitants/' 

^' Turn ye in faith to my Lord God, to whom 
nothing is impossible,^^ Patrick replied^ '^ and he 
will send you food, for he has abundance every- 
where/' Soon they came upon a herd of swine ; 
they slew, ate, rested and remained in that place 
for two nights. " After this,'' he says^ '• they gave 
thanks to God and I was honoured in their eyes." 
When some wild honey was found, one of the 
sailors offered Patrick a part of it, saying, '' This 
is an offering, thanks to God !" But he refused it, 
suspecting that the man had some superstitious 
notions in his mind, or had offered it to a heathen 
god. 

The same night an event occurred which he could 
never forget. He must have had a night-mare ; 
he thought it a temptation of Satan. " I felt as if 
a great stone had fallen upon me. I could not 
move a limb. How it came into my mind to call 
out Helios [or Eli] I know not ; but at that mo- 
ment I saw the sun rising in the heavens, and 
whilst I cried out Helias ! Helias! with all my 
might, lo, the brightness of the sun fell upon me, 
and straightway removed all the weight." 



58 SAINT PA THICK, 

This has been considered ^' a sufficient proof* 
that in his earlier days Saint Patrick invoked the 
saints. But it is no proof at all. Even if he 
called upon Elias^ he says that he knew not how it 
came into his mind. It was something unusual ; 
it was not his habit in youth ; he could not explain 
how it happened in his old age. Moreover, Elias 
was never invoked as a saint in the Roman Church 
before the fourteenth centurv, nor in the Greek 
before the tenth. In some of the more ancient 
" Lives'' the word is not '' Helias" but '' Eli." It 
may have stood thus in the original copy of the 
Confession, as Dr. Todd suggests. f 

But what did Patrick mean by '' Eli ?" If he 
knew the gospels, he must have remembered the 
Saviour's loud cry, when on the cross. Without 
knowing w^hat it meant, he may have used it in 
his strange distress. But the name Eli, " my God,'^ 
was sometimes, applied to Christ in the early 
centuries, as in the hymn of Hilary of Poictiers. 
Patrick might have heard it thus used before he was 
a captive. When in trouble he may have uttered it; 
he ^^ knew not how it came into his mind." He 
was not accustomed to invoke God by that name in 

'^Lanigan, Carew. 

fTodcFs St. Patrick, pp, 370-373. 



SAINT PATBICK. 59 

his prayers. No miracle is described. He cried 
aloud, and just then the sun was rising. The spell 
was gone. But he long afterward believed that 
God showed him mercy at that time. No saint 
had helped him. He says, ^^ I am persuaded that 
I was relieved by Christ my Lord, and that his 
Spirit then cried out for me, and I trust it may be 
so in the day of my trouble, for the Lord saith in 
the gospel, * It is not ye that speak, but the Spirit 
of your Father, which speaketh in you !^^* When 
he was so nearly asleep, and so benumbed that he 
did not think of calling upon his God, the Spirit 
prompted him to pray. This may be his meaning. 
We have dwelt upon this, because it is the only 
instance in the Confession which can be wrested to 
support the invocation of the saints. 

For sixty days Patrick wandered about with the 
sailors. This gave rise to the story of a second 
captivity ;t perhaps he so regarded it. It is 
evident that he grew weary of his company, for he 
says that on the sixtieth night (after leaving his 

•^ Matthew x, 20. 

f Probus, the Bollandists, and others. Keander repre- 
sents him as carried away again from his home by pirates, 
and " after sixty days" ref^tored to liberty. — Mem. Ch, Life, p. 
426. 



60 SAINT PA TRICK, 

master, probably) ■* the Lord delivered rne from 
their hands/^ The accounts of his wanderings on 
the French coasts, converting the mariners, going 
home with them and converting their countrymen, 
travelling about in Europe and ever drifting 
Romeward, have not a shadow of foundation in 
the Confession. It goes on to say : " After a few 
years [of absence in captivity] I was again with 
my parents in Britain,* who received me as a son, 
and earnestly besought me never to leave them 
again, after having endured such great tribula- 
tions.'^ 

The Clyde, the great rock, the few lingering 
Roman soldiers — and the home of his youth had no 
longer any power to retain him in his native land. 
To prove himself a real Succath, *' strong in war,'^ 
and make himself a captain fearful in Pictish eyes, 
was not to his mind. He had other thoughts. 
Loving them still, he could leave father and 
mother for the sake of Christ. When he slept he 
saw Ireland in visions, and heard the voices of its 
youth calling upon him to hasten and help them. 
Of his dream he says, '' In the dead of night I 
saw a man coming to me as if from Ireland, whose 

t Brittaniis. Villamieva reads, "Britannia." Bede used 
tlie plural form, for Britain was divided into several parts. 



t 



SAINT PATRICK, 61 

name was Victor,'^ bearing innumerable epistles. 
And he gave me one of tliem, and I read the be- 
ginning of it, which contained the words, ^The 
voice of the Irish/ And while repeating them, I 
imagined that I heard in my mind the voice of 
those who were near the wood of Foclut, which is 
near the Western Sea. Thus they cried, ^We 
pray thee, holy youth, to come and henceforth walk 
among us.' I was pierced in heart, and could 
read no more; and so I awoke. Thanks be to 
God, that after very many years the Lord granted 
unto them the blessing for which they cried ! 

^^ Again on another night — I know not, God 
knoweth, whether it was within me or near me, I 
heard distinctly words which I could not under- 
stand, except these at the close : ^ He who gave his 
life for thee is he who speaketh in thee.' And so 
I awoke rejoicing."' In some of his dreams he 
was led to recall such texts of Scripture as these : 
"The Spirit helpeth our infirmities." "Christ, 
who maketh intercession for us." If such was the 
effect of his dreaming, it was not in vain. There 

* This man Victor is called an angel in the " Lives" written 
"by Saint Patrick's adorers. The name is given to his supposed 
guardian angel. What he relates as a dream - they represent 
as a reality. What he " imagined" they make miraculous. 



62 SAINT PATRICK, 

is nothing here absurd. All is quite consistent 
with the feelings of a man who is enthusiastic 
and eager to tell the good news of salvation to a 
barbarous people. We should not forget his object 
in telling these dreams. It was to show that he 
did not assume the ministry of his own accord. 
He was not sent by men. He felt that he was 
called of God. If he thought that his call was 
supernatural, and that there was something more 
than imagination in his visions, it was only what 
many other excellent men have thought concerning 
their own dreams. Rightly or wrongly, he took 
them as signs that he was commissioned by the 
Lord to preach the gospel in Ireland. 

Is it at all likely that he spent thirty-five years 
in studies and travels before returning to Ireland? 
Is it likely that he waited until he was sixty years 
of age before preaching anywhere? Did he roam 
about from the year 395 to the year 432, now 
studying with Martin of Tours, now at the re- 
nowned monastery at Lerins, and again at Rome? 
And all this time dreaming of Ireland, and think- 
ing that God was calling him to the work? It 
can hardly be credited. But we may well sup- 
pose that he studied for several years in the best 
school that he could aiford. 




CHAPTER IV. 

THE FAILURES OF PALLADIUS. 

HILE Patrick is preparing for his work in 
Ireland, let us see how far the field is pre- 
c(^^ pared for him. We shall thus understand 
that some eiforts of his predecessors were 
afterward ascribed to liini in order to increase his 
glory. 

It is, to this day, the boast of every true Irish- 
man that Erin was never invaded by the Romans 
— the Caesars gained no footing there. Its brave, 
warlike, hospitable, high-minded people detested 
the idea of being a mere province of the great 
empire. They appear to have sent boat-loads of 
heroes across the Channel to aid their brethren, the 
Scots, against the foreign army on the Clyde. 
Hating Roman soldiers, would they love Roman 
missionaries ? It might have been hard for even a 
Briton to gain a hearing among them. 

Who first taught the gospel in Ireland has never 
been shown to the people of our days. It may be 
putting the case too boldly to say that ^' the Church 

63 



64 SAINT PATRICK. 

of Lyons and that of Ireland were both founded 
by Greeks, and the Scotch and Irish clergy long 
spoke no other tongue/^* O'Halloran, a Romanist, 
says : '^ I strongly suspect that by Asiatic or 
African missionaries, or through them by Spanish 
ones, were our ancestors instructed in Christianity, 
because they rigidly adhered to their customs as to 
tonsure and the time of Easter. Certain it is that 
Patrick found a hierarchy established in Ireland." 
As to the '^ hierarchy" there is no evidence. The 
very notion of one, before Patrick, is stoutly op- 
posed by other Roman Catholic historians. " It is 
certain," says Father Brenan, ^'that there was 
neither a hierarchy nor a Christian bishop in 
Ireland antecedent to the period of which we are 
treating (431), although it is highly probable that 
the natives, in many parts of the island, were 
by no means unacquainted with the Christian 
religion." f 

No doubt at an early day there were in the 
southern part of Ireland ^^some few Christian 
families, separated from each other, and probably 
ignorant of each other's existence. ... It cannot 
be denied that the traditions of Irish Church 

^ Michelet, Hist, of France, ch. iii. 
f Brenan's Eccl. Hist, of Ireland, ch. i. 



\ 



SAINT PATRICK. 65 

history speak of isolated congregations of Chris- 
tians in Ireland before the arrival of Patrick/^* 
They are to be counted among '^ the Scots believ- 
ing on Christ'^ before Palladius was sent to them 
as their •' first bishop/^ as a bishop was then held 
to be at Eome. The case will be cleared if we 
assume that their teachers and ministers were 
Culdees — that in many a quiet place was a cell, 
and the simple-hearted people gathered to hear the 
Word and worship God. 

The affairs of " the infant Church" of Ireland 
began to be talked of at Rome, where Celestine 
was chief bishop, and the error was gaining 
strength that he was the high pontiff of all the 
churches in the world. The Christians of Ireland 
ought to acknowledge him as ^^the holy father" 
and pope ! What a blessing to them, if they only 
knew it! The gospel might be with them, but the 
orders of clergy were wanting. They might have 
Christ, but they had not the Church in its latest 
and most improved form. They had followed the 
simple apostles, but were far behind the wise 
fathers. They might have presbyters, but they had 
no high prelate — not even " a bishop !" 

Celestine was moved " by the increasing number 

* Todd's St. Patrick, pp. 189, 221. 



66 SAINT PA TRICK, 

of Christians there/'"^ to act as a father toward 
" the infant Churoh^^ of the remote island. He 
would knit ties between it and the Church of Rome. 
Those artless Christians should have all the benefit 
of the improvements invented by men, who saw 
in the great Roman empire their model for Chris- 
tendom, and who constructed offices in the Church 
to correspond with the offices in the State. They 
should have a bishop, a sort of church pro-consul, 
or resident legate — one who would not merely look 
after the sheep, but hold a general rule over the 
shepherds. He cast his eye about on his clergy to 
find a proper man. He wished to send him, not to 
the heathen Irish, but to " the Scotsf believing on 
Christ,^^ and yet, ^' whose faith was not right ;^^ not 
to be a missionary, but a ruler; not merely to 
preach, but to use power; not to convert the 
ignorant so much as to confirm the believers in the 
gospel according to Rome ; not to bring the pagans 
unto Christ, so much as to bring Christians under 
the Roman Church. 

Among the men of promise and zeal was Pal- 

* Moore's Hist. Ireland, p. 209. 

f The Scots of Ireland as well as of Scotland. Thackeray 
supposes that Patrick requested Celestine to send a bishop to 
Ireland. — Anc. Brit, ii. 166, 



SAINT PATRICK. 67 

ladius. There is small proof that he was a native 
of Britain and a deacon of the Church of Rome. 
It seems clearer that he was quite sound in doctrine, 
holding with Augustine the great truths of man's 
native depravity, inability to save himself and need 
of Christ's atonement and power. He was grieved 
to see the errors of Pelagius taking root in the 
British Isles — errors growing out of the denial of 
man's sinfulness by nature, and leading fallen 
sinners to think that they could save themselves by 
their own moral works. He wished some strong 
defender of the faith to be sent to Britain, in 
answer to a loud call from that quarter for the aid 
of some defender of the truth. Perhaps he had 
some part in sending Germanus in his own stead, 
to displace the heretics and direct the Britons to 
the Catholic faith. ''"^ Perhaps it was he wdio told 
Celestine also of the believers in Ireland ^^ whose 
faith was not right/' Their error, however, was 
not Pelagianism. 

Here was the man to place over the Christians 
of Ireland. He was raised to a bishop, and A.D. 
431 sent forth by Celestine, f with a goodly array 

^ Prosper's Chronicle. Ussher^s Brit. Eccl. Antiq. 
f '^ France was probably tlie country from which Palladius 
and his companions came ; and the mission to Ireland, of 



68 SAINT PATBICK 



of attendants. He went thinking that those 
^^ believei's greatly needed the unity which a bishop 
alone could give them." Of course some of the 
Romish historians relate that Patrick was chosen 
to attend Palladius, Of course they represent the 
bishop as carrying with him, not only a copy of the 
Sacred Scriptures, but also " a portion of the relics 
of St. Peter and St. Paul !" 

Palladius thus appears as " an emissary of the 
Roman See, whose object was to organize Chris- 
tianity among the Scots of Ireland and Scotland, 
in accordance with what was then the Roman 
model. The civil power of Rome being on the 
wane, the ecclesiastical power began to rise on its 
ruins, and there may have been no little connection 
between the two processes ; the loss of one species 
of power may have helped an ambitious people, 
accustomed to universal dominion, to seek after the 
establishment of another.'^* 

On the AVicklow coast he landed, but he was 
not well received. AYliy not? An old Irish 
chronicler savs of him : " He was sent to convert 

which he was the head, although sanctioned hy the See of 
Eome, was in reality projected and sent forth hy the Gallican 
Church."— TodcTs St Patrick^ p. 2S0. 
*McLanchlan, Early Scot. Cli. p. 88. 



SA IN T PA TBI CK. 8d 

this island, lying under wintry cold, but God 
hindered him, for no man can receive anything 
from earth unless it be given him from heaven ; 
for neither did those fierce and savage men receive 
his doctrine readily, nor did he himself wish to 
spend time in a land not his own/^ 

It appears that he began to preach ^^in the 
country of the Hy Garchon,^^ but their prince, 
Nathi, took offence, and ordered him to leave. 
Palladius had not the zeal needed to force his 
opinions and make converts, nor the courage of 
which heroes and martyrs are made, or he had such 
tenderness toward the native Christians that he did 
not wish to bring trouble upon them. Some tell 
us that he was driven back by the violence of the 
barbarians ; others, that ^^ he paraded his authority 
before the Christians and pagans of the island, and 
excited the opposition of both ; and after vain efforts 
to subdue them to the authority of his master on 
the Tiber, he was compelled to abandon his design 
and flee the country."* The enmity of a heathen 
chieftain may have been one cause of the failure. 
^' But the Roman missionary might also have to 
thank his own uncompromising opposition to the 
prejudices of those Christian communities, who are 
* Ireland and the Irish. By Kirwan, N. Y, Observer, 1855, 



70 SAINT PATRICK, 

mentioned as the sole object of this visit, and whose 
co-operation, undoubtedly, was necessary for the suc- 
cess of any endeavours to Christianize their pagan 
neighbours. '^"^ These artless followers of Christ did 
not want such a bishop over them. They let him 
know it, and regarded it as sheer impertinence for 
him or his master to interfere with their simple 
rites and their independence. The tradition is, 
that he founded three small churches in Ireland, 
in one of which he placed the ^^ relics of the 
apostles^^ that he had carried with him ! 

It is curious to find the name Patricius, or 
Patrick, given to him by some of the oldest Irish 
writers. He was thus called in Ireland for 
centuries. It is an important fact. It has caused 
very much of the confusion in the accounts of 
Saint Patrick. Events in the life of the one have 
been carried over into the life of the other, thus 
robbing Palladius to pay Patrick. This will 
furnish us with a key to certain legends soon to be 
noticed. Palladius did not go back in despair the 
way whence he came. There were other '^ Scots 
believing in Christ^^ to be visited. An ancient 
writer tells us that on leaving the people who had 
rejected him, '^ he was forced to go round the coast 
* Soames' Latin Church in Anglo-Saxon Times, p. 53. 



J 



^.4 IN T PA TE ICK, 71 

of Ireland toward the north, until, driven by a 
great tempest, he reached the extreme part of 
Modhaidh [Mearns ?], toward the south, where he 
founded the church of Fordoun, and Pledi is his 
name there/^ But Fordoun is not in the south of 
Scotland ; it is in the north-east, not far from Aber- 
deen. Nor is it in the ancient land of the Scots, 
but in that of the Picts, where a Roman camp had 
been established. Did the Scots refuse to accept 
him as their bishop ? Did he then go among the 
Picts and found a church ? Did he there lay aside 
his official dignities and work as a missionary ? 
His name seems to have become somew^hat popular 
at that place. The church and a neighbouring well 
were dedicated to him. He may have proved 
himself an enterprising man, devoting his energies 
to the good of the people, in temporal matters as well 
as spiritual. To this day in that town an annual 
market is called Palladie's fair, or '^ Pady fair, after 
Palladius himself.^'* This goes to show that he lived 
there for years, rather than a few months. To make 
the end of his mission suit the beginning of Saint 
Patrick's, it has been usual to fix his death at 
March 16, 432, not perhaps a year after his first 
landing in Ireland. This looks like shortening his 
^ Anc. Cli. Scot, in Spottiswoode Miscellany, p. 468. 



72 SAINT PATRICK. 

ministry for the express benefit of the ^^ apostle of 
Ireland.'^ The story that " he was crowned with 
martyrdom" may be only a smoother way of saying 
that foul work was made with the facts of his life. 
More sacredly is his life treated by the Scottish 
traditions. Longer space is given to it. There 
was no temptation to shorten his days and erase 
his deeds. He seems to have had some disciples, 
who became eminent missionaries. One of them 
was Servanus. The story* is that he was a native 
Scot, '^ lived according to the forms and rites of the 
primitive Church" until the coming of Palladius. 
^•The holy Servanus" was attracted to the new 
bishop ;t he received instruction; he aided in 
teaching the people ^^the orthodox faith," and the 
right form of the Church ; he taught the Christian 
law to the clergy; and Palladius raised him to the 
dignity of a bishop. All this could not well have 
been done in a few weeks or months. The date is 
supposed to be 440. If Servanus founded the in- 
stitution on the little isle of Loch Levin, as has 

* In the Breviary of Aberdeen. It is Eomish authority, 
and favours the Culdee theory. 

f " Scotland had never before seen a bishop, and was in a 
state of extreme barbarism." Milner, Ch. Hist. Cent. V. ch. xi. 
The want of such bishops was hardly the cause or the proof 
of the alleged barbarity. 



SAINT PATRICK. 73 

been claimed for ages^ he would seem not to have 
departed very far from the Culdee system. He 
still had his island cell. There grew up a Culdee 
establishment, which stoutly resisted the advances 
of Eome until the twelfth century. 

Another disciple w^as Ternanus, a Scot by birth, 
of noble blood, and baptized by Palladius. '' If 
it be true that he baptized Ternanus when a child, 
as it is said he did, and ordained him at last 
bishop of the Picts, he must have lived a good 
while ; and indeed Polydore Virgil, in his history 
of England, brings him down to the reign of Con- 
stantine. ... in the year 457.^^* If Ternanus 
was baptized in adult age, and made a bishop 
within a few months after Palladius came, the one 
must have been a good and wise Christian for years, 
or the other a very poor and imprudent overseer 
of the Church. This ordination must have taken 
place at a much later day than 432, when those 
who glorify Saint Patrick hasten Saint Palladius 
into his grave. These accounts lead us to believe 
that Palladius lived and laboured several years in 
Scotland, and died at rordoun,where his tomb was 
rifled at a later day, and his relics preserved until 

■^ Spottiswoode Miscellany, 466. Biographie Universelle puts 
his death at A. D. 450. 



74 SAINT PATRICK. 

the time of the Reformation.* True, these are 
traditions ; they are found in records of the Middle 
Ages ; but they are quite as well founded as the 
story about Saint's Patrick's commission from 
Rome to succeed the deceased Palladius. There is 
more reason to believe that Palladius lived beyond 
the year 432 than that Patrick took up his com- 
mission in the same year, and went as ^' the second 
bishop'' to the Scots in Ireland. There is not the 
slightest evidence that the death of the one had 
any connection with the mission of the other. 

What if Palladius did not die in 432 ? What 
if Celestine did? The latter could not appoint 
Saint Patrick as the successor of the former. It 
is worthy of notice that Celestine is the only 
Roman bishop Avho is said to have given his sanc- 
tion to the missionary. 

^ Ussher, Brit. Eccl. Antiq. cap. xvi., Spott. Miss. 466. 




CHAPTER V. 

SIFTING THE LEGENDS. 

)^| HE tares of fable are not to be bound up 
with the wheat of history. To set forth 
the true Saint Patrick from the fabulous, 
we notice some of the mavellous tales that 
have been told of him. None of them were 
written during his time : they were invented 
after he had been several hundred years in his 
grave. His Romish biographers of this day are 
quite ashamed to repeat the most ridiculous of 
them. But yet they give us the thread on which 
they are strung, and call it history. By sifting a 
few of the legends we may the better know the real 
man from the myth of the monks. 

The sum of these legends is as follows : After 
Patrick had received the vision of an angel calling 
him to Ireland, he went to Germanus for advice. 
Germanus had been a lawyer, a soldier and a 
military commander, fond of rough life, a noted 
hunter, and accustomed to slay wild beasts and 
hang their heads on a tree in the public square of 

75 



76 SA INT PA TEICK. 

Auxerre. It was a heathen custom. It displeased 
the bishop^ Amator, who had the tree cut down, 
and for this was driven from the town by the com- 
mander. But it was revealed to Amator that his 
enemy should oue day become bishop of Auxerre. 
This was coming to pass, and Germanus was a lay- 
man in the Church and a general in the army when 
Patrick visited him on the banks of the Yonne in 
the heart of France. There he studied four years ; 
some say thirty ! Fiacc says of Patrick, 

*' He traversed the whole of Albion, 
He crossed the sea — it was a happy voyage ; 
He took up his abode with Germanus, 
Far away to the south of Amorica." 

Then he went to Tours, where he passed four 
years with Martin, the bishop, who is represented 
as his uncle on the mother's side. It was im- 
portant to connect him with this great man in the 
AVestern Church, who did so much to advance the 
claims and the glory of Rome. There his head 
was shorn ; the tonsure marked him as one of the 
lower clergy. Then he grew wise in " church dis- 
cipline,'' and learned to convert flesh into fish ! 

His guardian-angel does not lose sight of him. 
He commands the young Patrick to pass some time 
with ^Hhe peoj)le of God/^ that is, the barefoot 



SA IN T PA TRICK. 77 

hermits in some retired corner of the world, which 
they thought was quite out of it. With them he 
lingers eight years^ and becomes a quite passable 
monk. Thence he is sent by the angel to visit 
certain islanders in the " Tyrrhene Sea.^^ He finds 
three other Patricks in a solitary cave, and asks 
leave to dw^ell with them. They answer that he 
cannot unless he w^ill draw w^ater from a certain 
fountain which is guarded by a very savage wild 
beast. He agrees to this. He goes to the fountain. 
The ravenous beast sees him; gives signs of great 
joy, and becomes " quite tame and gentle.^^ Patrick 
draws the water and returns with a blessing. The 
four Patricks dwell together for nine years.* Per- 
haps the Romanists lost the true one there, and 
have followed the wrong one in the various rambles 
which they record ! The more sober version of 
this part of the story is that Patrick the Briton 
studied for some time in the celebrated monastery 
at Lerins, to which he w^as sent by Lupus, the 
bishop of Troyes.f 

Again the angel appears, saying, ^^Go to St. 
Senior, a bishop who is in Mount Hermon, on the 
south side of the ocean, and his city is fortified 

^ Vita Tertia, in Colgan. 

f Soames, Latin Church ; Carew, Eccl. Hist. Ireland. 



78 SAINT PATRICK, 

with seven walls.'^ He understands better than we 
do the angel's geography. He goes^ for nothing is 
easier than for him to travel great distances. Here 
he is ordained a priest. Here come to him the 
voices of the children in Ireland^ entreating him to 
hasten and teach them. '' Go to Ireland'^ is the 
angel's command. 

" I cannot/' he replied, " because bad men dwell 
there." 

'' Go/' is the word again. 

'^ I cannot unless I see the Lord." Patrick goes 
forth with nine men, and sees the Lord, who takes 
him to his right hand and declares to him, 

" Go thou to Ireland, and there preach the word 
of eternal life." 

'^ I ask of thee three petitions/' answered 
Patrick — '^ that the men of Ireland be rich in gold 
and silver ; that I may be their patron ; and that, 
after this life, I may sit on thy right hand in 
heaven." (Surely this is not our Patrick !) 

'' Patrick, thou shalt have what thou hast asked ; 
and, moreover, whosoever shall commemorate thee 
by day or by night shall not perish for ever." 

He then goes to Ireland as a priest. But the 
people refuse to listen to him, for he has no com- 
mission from Rome. It is not enougli that the 



SAINT PATRICK, 79 

Lord has sent him. He must have a different au- 
thority. Not Heaven, but Rome, must send him, 
before he can have any success ! He suspects the 
cause of his defeat, and prays to the Lord : 
^^ Who didst guide my path through the Gauls and 
Italy unto these islands, lead me, I beseech thee, 
to the holy see of the Roman Church, that I may 
thence receive authority to preach thy word vrith 
faithfulness, and that the people of Hiberni may 
by me be made Christians.^'"^ (What impiety ! 
Is not the hand of a monk in all this ?) 

Patrick then sets out for Rome. On his way he 
again visits Germanus, and is further schooled into 
habits of monkish devotion. The angel urges him 
to go back to Ireland ; he starts, and Germanus 
sends with him Segetius the presbyter. Not yet is 
he a bishop, for Palladius had been sent with that 
rank to the Irish. At Emboria he is met by the 
former companions of Palladius, and they tell him 
Palladius is dead. He then turns aside to ^^a man 
of wondrous sanctity, a chief bishop, named Ama- 
tor (or Amatorex), dwelling in a neighbouring 
place," and by him Patrick is consecrated a bishop. 
Upon this he quickly takes ship, and reaches the 
unfriendly shores of the Emerald Isle. His 
^ Probns, quoted by Todd, St. Patrick, 324-326. 



80 SAINT PATRICK, 

labours are successful. But in this story there is 
nothing of his having been at Rome, nor of a com- 
mission from '' the pope/^ The genius of Probus 
was clouded in regard to the Roman mission. Of 
'that invention he seems not to have been aware. 

But we have not yet reached the climax of 
monkish fable. We have left out something, 
which we could not weave into the foregoing ac- 
count. It is this : On one of his many visits to 
Germanus he is thus advised : " Go to the succes- 
sor of St. Peter, namely Celestine, that he may or- 
dain thee, for this office belongs to him.^^ Patrick 
goes, but Celestine gives him no honour, because 
he has already sent Palladius to Ireland. One 
bishop to that country is all that he can afford. 
After this repulse Patrick goes with Segetius to an 
island in '^the Tyrrhene Sea." [One version is 
that he took this island on his way to Rome.] 
There he comes to a house which seems to be new. 
There the master, who appears to be a very young 
man, points him to a very old woman, and says, 
^'She is my daughter's granddaughter !'' And 
much more quite as wonderful. Those who ap- 
pear youngest are the oldest on that blessed isle. 
They had been in the habit of showing hospitality 
to every traveller passing that way. One night a 



SAINT PATRICK. 81 

pilgrim had come with a staff in his hand, and 
they had a precious relic which had the power of 
preserving those who sacredly kept it in all the 
freshness of youth. He was lodged with all kind- 
ness. In the morning he told them that he was 
the Lord Jesus, and leaving the staff with them, 
said, ^^ Keep it safely. After a long time a certain 
pilgrim will come named Patrick ;* give it to 
him.^^ Then Patrick refused to take the staff, un- 
less he should receive it from the Lord himself. 
Three days afterward he went with these remark- 
able people to Mount Hermon in the neighbour- 
hood, and there it was given to him to qualify him 
for the conversion of Ireland. He went again to 
Rome [it was the first time, according to some], 
and was received with favour, for Celestine had 
now heard of the death of Palladius. He was 
then ordained a bishop, given the name of Patrick, 
and sent on the great mission, with a fair supply 
of relics, which, as some will have it, he filched 
from the pope. Three choirs then sang praises — 

* The author of this wretched story forgot to represent this 
name as afterward given to him by " Pope Celestine," when he 
received his commission. The staff figures largely in the 
Romish lives of Saint Patrick. The pretended relic was long 
kept, but publicly burned at the Eeformation. 
6 



^2 SAINT FA TRICK. 

one in heaven ; another In Rome, and a third in 
the wood of Erin, where the children were still 
calling for " the saint" to come and bless them.* 
What their ages were is not told, but Patrick^s is 
set down at sixty ! He had passed nearly forty 
years in study and in the chase after the true 
Church ! Verily some of our modern brethren 
may take courage ; they are not likely to have a 
rougher time than had this mythical Saint Patrick 
in getting to Rome. 

Such are the stories. Modern Romanists tone 
down the absurdities, and out of these trifling 
legends weave the accounts of Patrick's studies on 
the Continent and his commission from the pope. 
AVhat truth is there in them ? None whatever, we 
believe, so far as Saint Patrick is concerned. The 
greater part are incredible ; the rest untrue. We 
have passed over some of the contradictions and 
absurdities. We may sift out a few items of ap- 
parent fact, but they seem to belong to the life of 
Palladius. He is the Patrick who was connected 
with Germanus. He may have been a disciple 
of Martin of Tours^ and studied at Lerins. He 
may have been ordained by Amatorex. He may 
have wandered about the Mediterranean islands. 
^ Vita Septima, in Colgan ; JfXieline's St. Patrick. 



SA INT FA TRICK. 88 

He seems to have been at Emboria, wherever that 
was^ for it is mentioned in connection with his 
name. He appears to have been urged by Ger- 
manus to go to Ireland, and it was he who went 
as a bishop, with the seal of Celestine on his com- 
mission. One account is that Saint Patrick was 
sent with Germanus into Britain, in 429, to sup- 
press the Pelagian heresy ; this is far more likely 
to have been true of Palladius, for he was zealous 
on that subject. The story of Patrick^s repulse by 
the Irish is clearly borrowed from Palladius. We 
shall find the one represented as following closely 
in the footsteps of the other, landing on the same 
coast and driven away by the same Hy Garchon. 

There is but one point where a fact seems to crop 
out through the mass of fables. It is where Saint 
Patrick is sent to Ireland in his younger days, 
and, as a priest or presbyter, begins his work 
without having been at Rome, and without any 
sort of commission from her bishop. It was not 
necessary to have a permission from that quarter. 
Good men and churches and synods had the right 
to send missionaries wherever they chose, without 
a word from ^^ the holy father.^^ Even he did not 
claim that all success depended upon him. He was 
not yet a full-blown pope. With all his faults^ 



84 SAINT PATRICK. 

Celestine was too good a bishop to assume such 
high powers. " A ray of truth has here broken 
out through clouds of fable, and no greater proof 
can be desired that the Roman mission was a 
modern addition to the facts of history/^ * 

And yet it is assumed that St. Patrick was sent 
forth from Rome, as her bishop, her legate, her 
apostolic nuncio ! Hear Father Brenan : " Upon 
the death of Palladius, Patrick received the regular 
missionary powers from the sole divinely estab- 
lished source of spiritual jurisdiction on earth, the 
head of the Church, at that time also Pope Celes- 
tine ]^ and thus other Romish writers assert in 
shorter words, from Place's Scholiast down to Mon- 
talembert. It is made the great point with them. 
It lies at the basis of all the wonders done by " the 
apostle of Ireland.^' Without it he is nothing in 
their eyes. It has become deeply rooted in the 
hearts of thousands of Irishmen. It has made 
him their patron saint; they swear by his name, 
pray to him, adore him, and regard him as the 
guardian of the whole Irish race wherever they 
may roam in other lands. 

Moreover, this Roman mission is made the 
central point in all the chronology of his life. All 
*Todd'sSt. Patrick, p. 327. 



SAINT PATRICK. 85 

other dates are conformed to it. If he was com- 
missioned by Celestine as the successor of Pal- 
ladius, it must have been in 432^ for this Roman 
bishop died early in that year. If he was then 
sixty years of age^ he was born in 372. But what 
of the other dates ? If he was thirty when he 
went to Germanus, he must have found a poor 
teacher of theology, for this man was a military 
ofiicer at that time, if not a heathen sportsman; he 
was not a bishop earlier than 418. Did Patrick 
study with him thirty years ? When, then, did he 
study with Martin of Tours, who died about 402 ? 
The greenest grave of the most learned man would 
not be a fit place to study ^^ church discipline.^' 
His death is fixed about the year 494, giving him 
the full age of one hundred and twenty-two years. 
These are a few of the beauties of monkish arith- 
metic. To fix his birth at 387 does not clear up 
the difficulties. These dry dates show a plentiful 
watering of the facts in the life of the missionary. 
Was Saint Patrick ever at Pome ? Perhaps he 
was, but there is no good evidence of it. Yet what 
if he were ? Protestants now visit that city, and 
most of them come away with their faith unim- 
paired ; so might he. And the Rome of the fifth 
century was not what it became in the eighth ; its 



S6 SAINT PATRICK. 

moon was only in the first quarter of decline and 
gently waning into the crescent. Her power was 
not the growth of one age; it was the gradual 
result of centuries of ambition. Even had Patrick 
studied there (as some legends run), and been there 
ordained, he might still have held none of Rome's 
peculiar views. Indeed, we might grant that he 
was sent forth, from that great centre of the empire, 
to labour in Ireland, and yet not admit Home to 
be the mother of all the ancient churches nor the 
head of Christendom. The question would not be 
so very important if the Papists had not laid sucli 
stress upon it. '' The fact that missionaries were 
sent out with the sanction of Home no more proves 
the modern papal claim to universal supremacy, 
than the fact of a bishop being now sent into the 
interior of Africa, with the sanction of Canterbury, 
would prove the universal supremacy of the Primate 
of England." * 

Was Saint Patrick sent to Ireland with a com- 
mission from Celestine? The question is im- 
portant. Its answer will help to solve many diffi- 
culties. We state some of our reasons for rejecting 
the story of the Roman mission : 

1. It is based on the legends of which we have 
^ Todd's St. ratrick, p. 333, note. 



SAINT PA THICK. 87 

given a specimen; rather were these fables framed 
to suj)port it. They are of comparatively late 
origin. They were put forth at a time when some 
show of foundation was needed for the pope^s 
power in Ireland, 

2. It is not mentioned by the older writers. 
This is admitted by the most candid Romaa 
Catholic historians, who base it only on tradi- 
tion."*" Could an appointment of so great mo- 
ment have been unknown to the chroniclers of 
that age ? If known, would they have passed 
it over in silence? Yet, strange to relate, cen- 
turies seem to have rolled away before the im- 
portant commission with which Saint Patrick is 
said to have been honoured by Saint Celestine was 
mentioned by any British or foreign writer.f 
Not a word is said about it by Sechnall, his sup- 
posed nephew, his disciple and eulogist. He wrote 
a poem in praise of the great man, but thrust upon 
him no glory derived from an education on the Con- 
tinent or a sanction from Rome. He describes 
him as ^' constant in the fear of God, immovable 
in faith, one upon whom as a second Peter the 
Church is built, and one who obtained from God 

* Lanigan, Colgan, Carew. 

t Carew, Eccl, Higt. Ireland, p. 74. 



88 SAINT PATRICK, 

his apostleship. The Lord chose him to teach 
barbarous nations, and to fish with the nets of 
doctrine." Fiacc's Hymn represents him as edu- 
cated on the Continent, but says nothing of the 
Roman mission. If it were a fact, they certainly 
would not have ignored such an honour, unless 
they were too proud of the independence of the 
Irish Church.* 

Prosper of Aquitaine took into his special care 
the praises of Celestine, for he was the bishop's 
friend and counsellor. He advised the sending of 
Palladius to ^Hhe Scots believing in Christ." Pal- 
ladius went, stayed a few weeks, raised three 
chapels, and ran away ; yet for this brief and ig- 
noble eflPort Celestine is named with high honour. 
But Patrick went to Ireland, laboured there 
twenty-three years before Prosper finished his 
chronicle, and was blessed with the most signal 
success. Was not this to the honour of Celestine, 
who did not live to hear of it ? Was he not the 
spiritual father of the Irish Church ? Yet Prosper 
never mentions Patrick. He neither tells us that 
he was at Pome nor that he was sent out from 
Rome. Why not? It must have been for the 

* Todd's St. Patrick, p. 312. This silence occurs in five of 
the seven lives in Colgan's Trias Thaumaturga, 



SA INT PA TRICK, 89" 

reason that Celestine had no part in the glorious 
work of redeeming the sons of Erin to the Lord. 
I^or had Rome. Patrick had gone forth from 
another quarter^ and Prosper did not care to relate 
the deeds of an independent missionary. 

Bede maintains the like silence. He enters 
Patrick in his martyrology as a presbyter, which is 
some proof of his existence. He mentions Ninian, 
and Palladius, and Coluraba as eminent mission- 
aries; why not Patrick? He either knew noth- 
ing of the mission to Ireland, or he cared not to 
tell what he knew. He could hardly have been 
ignorant. Was it because he could not honestly 
say that Patrick was in Pome, and could not in 
any way make him support the Roman pretensions 
of the eighth century ? Bede had a strong love for 
the Roman party. The deeds of its bishops and 
popes he gloried in telling. But if Patrick was 
only a presbyter, an independent missionary, an 
associate of the Culdees, a humble man who had 
devoted himself to the Irish mission by the com- 
mand of Christ, he was not thought worthy of 
mention.* 

3. Patrick is evidently confounded with Palla- 
dius. This we have shown as a conclusion drawn 

* Soames, Lat. Ch. p. 50 ; McLanchlan, Early Ch. Scot. p. 97. 



90 SAINT PATRICK. 

from sifting the legends. '^ We infer," says Dr. 
Todd, " that the whole story of Patrick's connec- 
tion with St. Germain and mission from Celestine 
should be regarded as a fragment of the lost 
history of Palladius, transferred to the second and 
more celebrated Patrick, by those who undertook 
to interpolate the authentic records of his life. 
The object of these interpolaters was evidently to 
exalt their hero. They could not rest satisfied 
with the simple and humble position in which his 
OAvn writings, his confession and his letter to Coro- 
ticus had placed him. They could not concede to 
Palladius the honour of a direct mission from 
Rome, without claiming for Patrick a similar 
honour. They could not be content that their own 
Patrick should be regarded as an unlearned, a rude 
uneducated man, even though he has so described 
himself. The biography of Palladius, ^ alio nomine 
Patricius/ supplied them with the means of effect- 
ing their object, and gave to the interpolated story 
the appearance of ancient support.'' Thus we may 
account for what is related of Patrick's education 
on the Continent, his monastic tonsure, his ordina- 
tion by Amator, his consecration by Celestine, his 
Roman mission and his first failure in Ireland. 
Thev belon^j; to the first Patrick. '^ No ancient or 



SAINT PATRICK. 91 

trustworthy authority has countenanced these 
statements in reference to the second Patrick/^* 

This patchwork makes a chaos of chronology, 
as if the dates were thrown into a box, shaken up, 
and drawn out by one whose eyes are so bandaged 
that he cannot see the facts of history. We shall 
present, in the next chapter, a chronology that will 
better accord with the facts of Saint Patrick^s life ; 
but it will set at naught all theories of the Romish 
mission. 

4. The reception and success of Saint Patrick 
argue against the Eoman mission. If we under- 
stand that the Irish people hated civil Rome, and 
were suspicious of ecclesiastical Rome, all will be 
clear. Palladius was rejected because he came to 
place a new yoke upon the Irish Christians, and 
be their chief bishop, teaching them new usages 
and ruling in a new way.f Patrick went with no 
Roman views or commission, no aim to lord it 
over God^s heritage, no design but to preach 
Christ and save sinners ; and he succeeded. He 
bore the true cross, and not the crosier. View 
him as a Romish prelate, and there is confusion; 
regard him as an earnest Christian missionary, 

* Soames, Lat. Ch. p. 50. 

t Todd's St. Patrick, pp. 321, 332, el passim. 



92 SAINT PATRICK. 

going forth from North Britain, and all is clear. 
Cut him loose from the meshes of Rome, and the 
burden of continental legends rolls away. He 
then stands forth a devoted minister of Christ, 
with a tongue that can gain the Irish ear and a 
soul that can win the Irish heart. 

5. Saint Patrick claimed to have gone to Ireland 
of his own accord. None compelled him. He 
w^ent " bound in the spirit/^ and with no call but 
that of the Lord. To show this fact he refers to 
bis dreams. He had the sanction of his God and 
of his own conscience ; he needed none from Rome, 

6. There are intimations that he was ordained 
in Britain for the work. Certain "respectable 
clergymen'^ at first opposed his consecration, on 
acccount of an old fault, committed thirty years 
before in his youth. We have seen that some 
of the legends represent him as ordained in Gaul, 
without any connection with Rome. Such accounts 
would hardly be mere inventions of the monks. 

7. There is not one word in his own writings 
about an education on the Continent, or a Roman 
mission, or a friendship with Martin of Tours, 
Germanus or Celestine. Why not? He w^as 
writing in his old age, when Rome was rising 
toward the papacy, and receiving more and more 



SAINT PATRICK, 93 

honour on the Continent. He had been charged 
with presumption in having undertaken such a work 
as the conversion of the Irish, rude and unlearned 
as he was, and on his own authoritv. What a 
chance now for him to boast a little of his former 
advantages, and tell of his education abroad and 
of his commission from Rome ! This would have 
settled the question of his right to preach with 
those who favoured the Roman pretensions. But 
he said nothing of the kind. We infer, then, that 
he had never held any connection with Rome, or 
that the people had prejudices in that direction 
which he did not wish to rouse. They may have 
stood firmly on the ground of their independence. 
They may have cared little for Roman education, 
and less for Roman commissions. And that after 
Saint Patrick had been long with them ! On such 
matters, probably, he and they were agreed. 

Even if the Confession be a forgery, this argu- 
ment will hold good. For its author, assuming 
the name of Saint Patrick, evidently wrote with no 
design to prop up the theory of a Roman mission 
or a Continental education. He knew not their 
value, or he was not making up a history of events 
that never occurred. He so fully threw himself 
back into Saint Patrick's times and circumstances 



94 SAINT PATRICK. 

that he told only the truth. Bat here is a proof 
that the Confession is not a forgery. It is not 
stuffed with lying legends. Its very face proclaims 
that it was written by a man of truth, and such a 
man would not pen a "pious fraud.^^ It served as 
a basis for the later manufacturers ; they used the 
good material as they pleased. It was gold for 
their alloys. But they cared not to multiply copies 
of it^ and few now remain in the original form. 
It was cast into the shade^ for it could not serve 
the purposes of the Roman Church.* 

8. We shall find that the Irish Church was not 
conformed to the Roman during several centuries 
after Saint Patrick's death. " If Patrick came to 
Ireland as a deputy from Rome^ it might naturally 
be expected that in the Irish Church a certain sense 
of dependence would always have been preserved 
toward the mother Church of Rome. But we find, 
on the contrary, in the Irish Church afterward, a 
spirit of church freedom similar to that shown by 
the ancient British Church, which struggled against 
the yoke of Roman ordinances. . . . This goes 
to prove that the origin of this Church was inde- 
pendent of Rome.'^ f To this we shall again recur 

- Todd's St. Patrick, p. 387. 
fNeander, Ch. Hist., p. 123. 



>S'^ INT PA TRICK. 95 

when we consider whether Saint Patrick held any 
official connection with Rome, in his oversight of 
the Church to which he gave his toils. Some pre- 
latists think that he committed errors in not forming 
dioceses, and placing '^ bishops^' over them. His 
bishops were pastors, each having charge of a par- 
ticular church. '' The very errors into which he 
fell" are cited as evidence that he did not hold his 
appointment from Rome."^ 

* The Church of St. Patrick, by Rev. W. G. Todd, London, 
1844, p, 30. 



CHAPTER VI 



AMONG THE DATES. 




^\^FTER clearing away the rank growth of 
K legends from the path of Saint Patrick, we 



may now follow the track of his life. It is 
still like an old Indian trail through the 
dark woods ; many of the trees once '^ blazed^^ 
have fallen, and the footprints have become dim. 
Bat here is an ancient landmark, there an outlying 
fact, and with cautious step we undertake to follow 
him from the home of his parents on the Clyde. 
There we left him, lately returned from his cap- 
tivity. 

It is expressly stated in the Irish version of 
Nennius* that Patrick was a slave with Milchu 
when Palladius was sent to Ireland. If this be 
true, he was a slave in the year 431. If that was 
the first year of his bondage, he was then sixteen ; 
if the last, he was about twenty-two, for these are 
admitted to be the dates of his capture and his 

■^Nennius, abbot of Bangor, wrote about A.D. 688. — Cave^ 
Scrip, Hist, Lit, Ssec. vii. 620 ; Todd's St. Patrick, p. 394. 
96 



SAINT PATRICE-, 97 

release. This would give the year 409-415 as the 
period of his birth. As the Romanists are eager 
to link him with Palladius, we miglit assume that 
both of them left Ireland the same year. We see 
no way of bringing them together unless we sup- 
pose that the ship whieh bore the bishop northward 
was the very same that took up the fugitive young 
man of twenty-two. Both are said to have had 
rough sailing, and a wreck on the Scottish coast 
might have separated them for ever. Nor can we 
imagine how Celestine heard of Patrick, or sent 
him to Ireland, unless the bishop forwarded by 
post a report of the zeal shown by the young Briton 
on shipboard. Then comes the commission. 
Patrick gets it after one of his dreams, and with 
all speed departs to the children calling to him 
from the dark forests of Erin. We submit this 
theory as quite equal to any other which puts into 
the hands of Patrick a parchment sealed by the 
dying Celestine. 

We take the date of Nennius as nothing more 
than a close guess at the truth. He had no idea 
of the Roman mission. Let us take other data. 
From some of the additions to the Confession we 
learn that Patrick had committed a fault, w^e know 
not what, when fifteen years of age. Thirty years 



98 SAINT PATRICK, 

afterward he Avas about to be fully ordained to the 
work of the ministry. His friends opposed his 
going. One of them, to whom he had confessed 
the old forgiven fault, brought it forward as an ob- 
jection. He was overruled. This would make 
Patrick forty-five years of age at his ordination. 

Now if we can find the date of this event, we 
may clear up various difficulties. Let us assume 
that he sought ordination to qualify him more 
fully for the work in Ireland. When did he go 
thither? A curious Irish tract says that the battle 
of Ooha happened exactly forty-three years after 
the coming of Patrick to Ireland. In this fray 
Oilioll Molt w^as slain. The annals of Ulster fix 
it at 482-483. This would give 440 as about the 
date of Patrick's mission. 

By comparing Tirechan with Keating we have 
these dates : King Laogaire died in 474. He had 
reigned after the coming of Patrick thirty-two 
years. This gives the year 442 as the date of the 
mission. 

An Irish bard and historian of the eleventh cen- 
tury* says that Pope Gregory died one hundred and 
sixty-two years after Patrick's coming. Gregory 

■^ Gilla Csenihain, quoted more fully in Todd's St. Patrick, p. 
396. 



SAINT PATRICK, 99 

died in G04. This gives 442 as the year of the 
mission. Dr. Todd furnishes other dates, all drawn 
from sources independent of each other, and vary- 
ing little from those which we have quoted from 
his pages. Let the above suffice ; we are not writ- 
ing an arithmetic. We have good grounds for as- 
suming that about 442 was the date of his mission 
to Ireland, that he was then forty-five years of 
age, and that 397 was the year of his birth. 

Here then are twenty-three years which he had 
at his disposal after 4iis return from captivity — a 
very considerable number for study and for the 
trial of his gifts as a preacher. But we may sup- 
pose the time well employed. We are not driven 
to hide him in a monastery. There are a few traces 
of active labours ; they are mere traditions, but 
they accord with the circumstances of his life, and 
help to fill up the picture of his times. 

Where did this young Briton study? Not 
surely at Tours with Saint Martin, for, if our 
dates be correct, the one was an infant when the 
other was lying in his grave. It may have been 
at some Culdee cell or college, where the Bible 
was the chief classic, and students were hardly 
trained to write Latin letters with the elegance of 
Cicero. He never became a scholar. His know- 



100 SAINT PATRICK. 

ledge of Latin was limited. In later years lie 
spoke of himself as a man who ^^ was afraid to 
write in the language of the civilized world, be- 
cause he had not read like others, who had been 
devoted to sacred learning from their Infancy, and 
his speech had been changed to another tongue/' 
He had preached and prayed In the language of 
the Irish people. Very modestly he acknowledged 
himself to be ^^ rustic, unlearned/' brought up in 
the country as an uneducated man. But he seems 
to have been an Apollos mlgl^jty In the Scriptures, 
and able to move his Illiterate hearers by the 
power of his eloquence. We Infer therefore that 
Ills education w^as scriptural rather than classical. 
It was like that of jSTInlan, who had found his 
views of Bible truth quite different from those 
taught at Rome. 

Were there any ties between Patrick and Ger- 
manus of Auxerre ? It Is not easy to completely 
sever their names. They seem to have clasped 
hands, and that on British soil. This view Is 
favoured by traditions not In the Interest of the 
Romish monks. It is worthy of notice that while 
the one was thinking of going to Ireland as a mis- 
sionary, the other was coming to Britain as the 
champion of the true faith. The Pelagians were 



SAI^'T FA TRICK, 101 

busy in teaching the Britons that sin had not 
rendered man a helpless sinner^ and that by his 
good works he might save himself. There were 
many Christians who would not accept these 
errors, and yet could not ably defend the truth. 
They asked the churches of Gaul to send them 
help. At a synod held in 429 German us was 
chosen to visit Britain. The armour of a spiritual 
warrior was upon him, but perhaps he had learned 
from the great Augustine that good word, '^ Slay 
the errors, but love the erring.'^ With him Avent 
Lupus, afterward the bishop of Troyes, who was 
called '' the prince of Galilean prelates, the rule of 
manners, the pillar of virtue, the friend of God, 
the intercessor for men with Heaven. ^^ There is 
no good ancient evidence that they took a commis- 
sion from "Pope Celestine," yet he may have 
volunteered to grant them his blessing. They 
crossed the Channel, and probably went up through 
Cornwall, visited Glastonbury, and entered the 
valleys of Wales, preaching along the roads and 
in the fields. They seemed to carry everything 
before them. The humble Christians were de- 
lighted ; the haughty errorists, so fond of giving 
strength to the pride of man, began to make their 
boasts. 



102 SAINT PATRICK, 

A great debate was to come off at Verulam. 
Bede describes the scene in his lively style. He 
says that the champions of heresy came in gorgeous 
robes, while those of the truth appeared plainly 
dressed and diffident. "An immense multitude 
was assembled, with their wives and children. On 
the one side was divine faith ; on the other, human 
presumption. On the one side, piety ; on the other, 
pride. On the one side, Pelagius [by his repre- 
sentatives] ; on the other, Christ. . . . Germanus 
and Lupus permitted their adversaries to speak 
first, who occupied a long time and filled the ear 
with empty sounds. Then the venerable prelates 
poured forth the torrent of their apostolic and evan- 
gelical eloquence. Their speeches were filled with 
Scripture sentences. . . . The Pelagian party, not 
being able to answer, confessed their errors. The 
people, who were judges, could scarcely be re- 
strained from acts of violence, but signified their 
judgment by their acclamations.^^ ^ 

Germanus remained for some time in Britaip. 
Among the wonders related of him is his part in a 
battle. The Scots and Picts were coming down 
upon the Britons. The fray bade fair to be fierce. 
Germanus is said to have baptized many of the 
^ Bede, EccL Hist, lib i. cap. 17. 



SAINT PATRICK. 103 

British soldierSj and then acted quite as a general, 
as he well knew how to do. He probably knew 
the value of tremendous shouting. The fight 
began ; he shouted hallelujah three times ; the 
Avord ran along the line ; the whole army took it 
up, and the enemy took fright, and retreated in the 
greatest disorder.* The spot in Wales where this 
affair is supposed to have occurred is called the 
Field of Garmon, the Welsh name of Germanus. 
Several Welsh churches bear his name. Such 
events were likely to draw the attention of young 
Patrick. 

To find Patrick in Wales need not surprise us. 
Between the people of the two countries there were 
ties of language, and, probably, of religion. Thither 
the Highlanders were quite likely to drive many 
families from the lands of the Clyde. One tradi- 
tion is, that Patrick had a retreat and a cell in the 
Vallis Eosina, which some have claimed as his 
birth-place. It is said, also, that he preached in 
Wales and Cornwall, with whose Celtic speech he 
might have been familiar. If this were true, he 
would scarcely fail to spend some time at Glaston- 
bury, which has been called the cradle of British 
Christianity, ^^the first ground of God, the first 
* Bede, EccL Hkt. lib i. cap. 20. 



104 SAINT PATRICK. 

ground of the saints in England ; the rise and 
fountain of all religion in England/^ It was called 
the holy isle of Avalon. Its church claimed 
descent from the churches of Asia Minor, One 
tradition is, that Patrick studied there for thirty 
years; another, that he died there and was buried. 
His name was loved in these regions, and given to 
several churches. In later days the Irish Chris- 
tians looked with reverence toward Glastonbury, 
and thither made their pilgrimages. It is possible 
that Germanus met Patrick at some of these points 
before returning to Gaul. They may have eaten 
together some of the famous apples of Avalon."^ 

William of Malmsbury says : "When Germanus 
w^as meditating a return into his native country, he 
formed an intimate acquaintance wath Patrick, 
w^hom he sent after some years to the Irish as a 
preacher, at the bidding of Celestine.^^ The latter 
part of this sentence we do not believe ; the " some 
years'^ reveal the mistake. Celestine had but a 
few months to live. But the " intimate acquain- 
tance'' was very possible. Patrick may have 
learned much from the man of heroic zeal, w^ho 
caused the churches to be thronged, and ])reached 
in the open fields, along the highways, and wher- 
* Camden, Britannia, Col. 63. 



SAIXT PATRICK. 105 

ever he could make war against the heresies of 
Pelagius. They may have talked together of 
Ireland, whose rulers were deluded by the bards 
and priests of Druidism. 

There are traces of other labours. ^^This St. 
Patrick did not neglect his native country of 
North Britain, but was very useful and assistant 
to the other instruments of that good work, in 
bringing the people into and confirming them more 
and more in the Christian faith.""^ Such is the 
statement of a writer in the early part of the 
eighteenth century, when referring to certain tradi- 
tions of Scotland, where the name of Patrick some- 
times appears in towns and churches. 

There is no good proof that Patrick ever set foot 
out of the British Isles, and yet he may have 
crossed the Channel and laboured in Armorica. 
One story is, that he there passed three or four 
years as a pastor, under the direction of Germanus.f 
A Celtic Briton would not have been an entire 
stranger in that country of Celts, who had such a 
readiness to accept the gospel. It also has 
treasured his name and claimed his birth. He 
may have helped to start a movement which be- 

* Anc. Ch. Scot, in Spottiswoode Miscellany, 
f Lanigan, Eecl. Hist. Ireland, vol. i. 79. 



106 SAINT PATRICK. 

came wonderful after his departure, and continued 
for almost a century. The Saxons were devouring 
Britain and driving away her Christian people. 
^^To escape from their bloody yoke, an army of 
British monks, guiding an entire tribe of men and 
women, freemen and slaves, embarked in vessels 
not made of wood, but of skins sewn together, sing- 
ing, or rather howling, under their full sails, the 
lamentations of the Psalmist, and came to seek an 
asylum in Armorica. . . . This emigration lasted 
more than a century, and threw a new but equally 
Celtic population into that part of Gaul w^hich 
Roman taxation and barbarian invasion had in- 
jured least, and where the ancient Celtic worship 
had retained most vitality. With the exception 
of three or four episcopal cities, almost all the 
Armorican peninsula was still pagan in the sixth 
century. All the symbols and rites, the myths 
and arcanas of paganism seemed to be concentrated 
in that wild and misty country.^^ (Yet some 
writers picture it as the blessed Eden that, in 372, 
gave Saint Patrick to the world.) The British 
missionaries " came to ask shelter of their breth- 
ren, issued from the same race and speaking the 
same language. They undertook to pay for the 
hospitality they received by the gift of a true 



SAINT PATRICK. 107 

faith, and they succeeded. They gave their name 
and worship to their new country. . , . Fifty 
years after their appearance the Gospel reigned in 
the peninsula.^^"^ If Patrick did not aid in it, he 
must have known of the movement when toiling 
among another Celtic people. 

A ray of truth may have gleamed upon Probus 
when he said that Patrick began his work in 
Ireland as a young man and ^' a priest.^^ In one 
of the supposed additions to the Confession he is 
made to say to certain Irish Christians, ^^ You 
know, and God knoweth, how I walked among 
you from my yoidh,^^ This may mean that he 
began his ministry among them before he was 
ordained to the office of '^ a bishop/^ whatever that 
was. He may have laboured in the southern part 
of the island, where the little bands of Christians 
were most numerous. Wars among the tribes 
may have hindered him from great efforts which 
the chroniclers would notice. Some of them, how- 

^ Montalembert, Monks of tlie West, ii, p. 260, et seq.; also 
Gildas and Camden. The latter says ^^From that time the 
Armorici, being subdued by little and little, the name of 
Britains grew so great in this new country that the whole 
body of inhabitants began to fall under it, and the tract to be 
called Britannica ArmoricaJ^ Also D' Israeli's Amenities of 
Literature, ii. 2. 



108 SAINT PATRICK, 

ever, dated his arrival about the year 436. Often 
he may have crossed and recrossed the Irish 
Channel. He may have tasted the dangers of 
labouring in such a country. Wishing to have 
full power to organize churches and ordain 
ministers, he may have applied for ordination in 
Britain. Then came the opposition of his rela- 
tives and friends. 

'^ Why does this man rush into danger amoug 
the heathen, who know not the Lord ?'^ they said 
one to another. " That fault in his youth V^ 
whispered a confidant. But he persevered. Noth- 
ing could turn him aside — not their offers of 
wealth, not their tears. He was ready to leave all 
and follow Christ. '' Many gifts were offered me 
with tears, if I would remain,^^ he tells us. " I 
was forced to offend my relations and many of my 
well-wishers. But with God's guidance I did not 
yield to them at all, not by my own power, for it 
w^as God who triumphed in me. He did not 
hinder me from my labour, which I had dedicated 
to my Lord Christ. I felt no small power from 
him, and my faith was proved before God and 
men. Wherefore I boldly say that my conscience 
reproves me not here nor hereafter.'^ 

And yet so vigorous a man may have felt young 



SAINT PATRICK. 10 J 

at forty-five, or lie would so appear to himself when 
over ninety, and then looking back to the time 
when he fully entered upon his mission. In the prime 
of life he set foot on the shores of Erin as a mis- 
sionary. That he went first to the tribes of 
Leinster, landed at Inbher Dea, on the Wicklow 
coast, made a few converts, roused the wrath of the 
Hy Garchon, yielded the ground, took ship again, 
and sailed northward, is extremely doubtful. It 
looks too much like a story borrowed from the ad- 
ventures of Palladius. " It is not reasonable to 
suppose that both missionaries should have done 
exactly the same things ; that both should land at 
the same place, both be driven off by the same 
chieftain, and both turn to the north of the island ; 
with this difference only, that Palladius is driven 
(according to some accounts) by a storm round the 
northern coast of Scotland to the region of the 
Picts, and Patrick landed safely in Dalaradia, 
where his ministry is at once successful. Patrick, 
w^e may readily believe, went at once to Ulster, to 
visit the place with which he was formerly 
acquainted, and where he expected to be well 
received.^^ "^ The oldest authorities have nothing 
of the Wicklow story. 

* Todd's St. Patrick, p. 339, slightly condensed. 



s'f 



CHAPTER VII. 

FIRST LABOURS OF PATRICK. 

|4 N Irish herdsman is said to have kept the 
1^^ flocks of his master Dichu near the lower 

0*^ end of the Strangford Lough. One day he 
^ strolled down toward the shore^ and saw a 
boat put into a little cove, as if there was some 
secret business on hand. Out of it stepped a small 
party of men, who had been wearied in toib'ng 
Avith the waves. Carefully stowiug away their 
luggage, they hid their boat among the rushes, and 
then set forth to explore the country. A man of 
about forty-five years appeared to be the chief of 
the party. 

^^ Robbers/^ thought the herdsman. ^^ Pirates 
from the land of the Picts !'' They seemed to be 
gazing over the neighborhood, as if spying out the 
land, and about to choose some house to plunder 
or fall upon some unguarded flock. They must 
have been hungry enough, if they had been for three 
days upon a barren isle, since called Inis Patrick, 
just off the Dublin coast. One story is, that they 

110 



SAINT PATRICK, 111 

had sought to make them a home on its sands, 
where no man dwelt^ and famine threatened their 
lives. Not even a fisli would enter their nets^ and 
the water-fowl took wing. The choice of such an 
island would indicate that they were Culdees, seek- 
ing the spot for a cell. ^^The practice of taking 
possession of secluded islands continued to charac- 
terize the Culdee system, and was carried by the 
missionaries, sent forth from time to time, whither- 
soever they went.^' * But the herdsman knew not 
the habits of Culdees, and he ran as fast as his feet 
could take him from the invaders. " Pirates" was 
the burden of every breath. 

Now his master, Dichu, had a choice home, and 
he happened to be in at the time. He was a great 
man in those parts, having the blood of an ancient 
king in his veins, and a goodly array of clansmen 
on his estates. His riches would afford fine spoils 
for a troop of marauders. The report of his almost 
breathless herdsman roused his fears, his wrath 
and his courage. He sounded the alarm. The 
clansmen gathered at his call. He took his sword 
and they their pikes. All marched forth eager for 
the fray. They drew nearer to the invaders. 

The chieftain was struck first, not with a ^^holy 
*McLauchlan, Early Sc^t. Ch. p. 182. 



112 SAINT PATRICK. 

staff/^ but with the nolile bearing and frank, 
friendly countenance of the leader of the strange 
party. He had not seen a more Avinning face for 
many a day. The foot of heaven's messenger 
'seems never before to have pressed his soil. He 
knew not Scripture enough to ask, " Comest thou 
peaceably ?^^ It would not have cleared up the 
mystery for the leader to say, " I am Patrick, a 
missionary. In the name of the living God I come 
to declare to you the glad tidings of salvation. 
My greeting is the angel's song, ^ Peace on earth, 
good-will to men.' ^^ For this chieftain was a 
heathen. He had heard of no Druid's prophecy,* 
beginning thus : 

" He comes, he comes with shaven crown, 
From off the storm-tossed sea." 

The sword was dropped. The warrior's face 
grew mild. The descendant of kings talked with 
the man of God. A finger pointed to the house, 
and a welcome was given to Patrick and his com- 
panions. It was not '' a multitude of holy bishops, 
presbyters, deacons, exorcists, readers, door-keepers, 
and students," as some would have us believe. As 
for '^some Gauls" and certain priests, who had 

^The legend of such a prophecy by a pagan Druid was tlie 
manufacture of a papal monk long after the event. 



SA INT PA TRICK. 113 

packed up their robes on the banks of the Tiber, 
our eyes do not perceive them. Rather were they 
such assistants as a missionary would be likely to 
take with him to a heathen land. They went to 
the house; hospitality opened the way for the 
gospel. Patrick preached, the chieftain listened 
and believed in Christ. He was afterward bap- 
tized, and all his family. He was " the first of the 
Scots^^ who confessed the faith under the preach- 
ing of Patrick. 

We may suppose that friends and neighbours 
were urged to come and listen to the good news 
which the stranger had to tell ; that the house be- 
came crowded, and that the missionary led them to 
the barn on the lands of the chieftain. There the 
Word grew and believers multiplied. One day 
the chieftain felt his heart touched with gratitude 
to God. "I give you the land on which we are 
standing,^' said he to the preacher. "In place of 
this barn let a church be built." 

"It shall be done," we hear Patrick reply, "'and 
may God's house be your habitation." 

^'I only ask," said Dichu, "that the length of 
the church shall not be from east to west, but 
from north to south." 

" It shall thus stand," answered the missionary, 

8 



114 SAINT PATRICK, 

for he did not see any virtue in having a church 
fronting toward the east, as was the general cus- 
tom in Oriental lands. What would the Lord 
care for that? It was a mere trifle. The farther 
account is : '^ Then Patrick erected in that place 
the transverse church, which is called even to the 
present day, Sabhal Patraic, or Patrick's Barn." 
The place is now called Sabhal, or Saul, and is 
about two miles from Downpatrick. It appears 
that other churches were built after this model, ex- 
tending from north to south.* Thus was estab- 
lished a base of operations. 

The story is, that Patrick was concerned for 
Milchu, his former master, from whom he had run 
away without being redeemed by money. He set 
set forth on foot to visit him. He went in the very 
face of danger, ^Ho offer to his former master a 
double ransom — an earthly one in money and 
worldly goods, and a spiritual one — by making 
known to him the Christian faith and the gospel 
way of salvation." Going northward into Antrim, 
he reached the top of a hill, where he stood gazing 
upon the scene of his exposures to the rains and 
snows of his vigils, his prayers and his dreams. 

* Bingham's Eccl. Antiq. bk. viii. 3. Usser ad Seldeniim, 
Epist. 51. 



SATXT PA TRICK, 115 

"What emotions must have filled his heart! By 
that rock he once had his Bethel. By that brook 
he had wrestled with God, and had his Peniel. 
Under yonder oak he had songs and visions of the 
night. Below him stood the house of his former 
master, who had used him so roughly twenty-three 
years before. What a joyful mission to enter those 
doors and tell the glad tidings of a Saviour! 
But, lo! that house is seen to be in flames, if we 
may credit the legend. The tyrant has heard of 
Patrick's coming. He is troubled. An evil spirit 
possesses him. He determines not to meet the 
missionary. He sets fire to the house, and casts 
himself into the flames, choosing to perish rather 
than to become the disciple of his former slave, 
Patrick sees it, and for three hours weeps in com- 
passion. But he next is represented as uttering 
his curse upon the family of the suicide, and de- 
claring that none of Milchu's sons shall ever sit 
upon his pretty throne ; they shall be slaves for 
ever ! 

Thus had Patrick cursed the rivers that would 
yield him no fish, according to the fables of the 
monks. ^^Let us hope,'' says Dr. Todd, "that 
these examples of vengeance, so common in his 
story, represent only the mind of the ecclesiastics 



116 SAINT PATRICK, 

of a later age^ and that his biographers knew not 
the spirit he was oV^"^ 

If there be any truth at all in the account of 
the visit to his former master, it is probable that 
Patrick failed in his efforts. He could not con- 
vince the tyrant that Christ was a Saviour. 
Baffled and repelled, he left him in his sins. 
Those sins were the flames into which he cast him- 
self. But the monks could not bear to have their 
hero defeated, and they portrayed the self-destruc- 
tion of his former master. One account is that 
some of the cruel princess family were afterward 
converted to the faith. 

Again we find the missionary at Sabhal, in what 
is now the barony of Secale. There he preaches 
for many days, going about in the neigbourhood, 
teaching all who will give heed to his words. 
^' The faith began to spread.^^ It was not by out- 
ward display that the hearts of the people were 
gained ; not by exhibiting relics, not by holding 
up a crucifix with an image upon it, nor by the 
mumbling of a Latin mass ; but by the preaching 
of God's holy word in the language of the natives. 
He had learned their speech while a slave, if in- 
deed it had not been to him as a mother tongue. 
^ Todd's St. Patrick, p. 406. 



SAINT PATRICK, 117 

He may have called tliern around him at the beat 
of a drum, and he pointed them to the true cross 
of Calvary. Having formed little bands of dis- 
ciples and placed teachers over thera^ he planned 
other missionary journeys. 

It seems to have been Patrick's policy to bring 
the rulers of the land first to the faith. Eleven 
centuries after him the Reformers acted somewhat 
upon this principle : Luther sought to gain the 
Saxon princes ; Calvin presented to Francis I. one 
of the noblest letters ever written^ and before other 
kings he laid his simple Confession of Faith, The 
Irish chieftains and kings had great power over 
their tribes in the fifth century. The men of 
infiuence were gathered at their courts. To win 
them was a great pointy for " kings might become 
nursing-fathers, and queens nursing- mothers'' to 
the infant Church. 

Tarah w^as before the mind of Saint Patrick. 
Thither he must go and there preach Christ. It 
was the chief centre of power. There were 
gathered the kings, princes, nobles and warriors. 
There were held the national conventions every 
three years. The supreme monarch of Ireland was 
Laogaire, who had reigned but three or four years 
before the coming of Patrick. He was about to 



118 SAI^'^T PATRICK, 

summon the great convention to meet him at 
Tarah. It was the parliament of that ancient day, 
according to an old Irish poet : 

" The learned 011am Fodla first ordained 
The great assembly, where the nobles met, 
And priests, and poets, and philosophers, 
To make new laws, and to correct the old, 
And to advance the honour of his country." 

Patrick resolved to attend this convention. 
Taking his boat, he and his companions sailed 
down the coast and entered the mouth of the river 
Boyne. Thence they took their way on foot toward 
the place where now stands tlie town of Slane. 
Coming one evening to the house of a nobleman 
named Sechnen, they were received with generous 
hospitality. The guests sang, prayed, read the 
Scriptures and spake of the errand on which Jesus 
Christ came into the world. The host let the 
truth sink down into his ears and reach his heart. 
He believed and v/as baptized. It was very com- 
mon in those days for missionaries to baptize 
persons within a few hours of their conversion. 
Thus did the apostles, but in their case the believers 
generally had some knowledge of the Scriptures 
beforehand, as in the case of the believers at Pen- 
tecost, the Ethiopian officer, and probably the 



SAINT PATRICK, 119 

centurion at Caesarea. This custom, however, in 
later days led to baptism upon a very slight evi- 
dence of true faith. It often secured only a nominal 
Christianitv. 

In this family of rank was a young man of 
gentle nature, attractive and impressible. The 
looks and words of the chief stranger won his 
heart; Patrick also was charmed with him. He 
determined to be a disciple and follow the mis- 
sionary wherever he went. His jmrents and friends 
tried to divert him from such a purpose. They set 
forth the dangers and the toils of such a life as he 
must have before him. But none of these things 
moved him. He left his home to be a missionary — 
the first, it seems, of the natives who was reared 
for the ministry. He could not be separated from 
Patrick, keeping close to him for years amid all 
his dangers and sufferings. We know not his 
native name, but for his gentleness he was called 
Benignus, or Binen. God had given him the power 
of song, and he used it for good. He sang the 
praises of the Lord before large assemblies, to whom 
Patrick preached. Thus he rendered great aid to 
the good cause. He was the Asaph of the move- 
ment. 

Patrick hastened onward, and pitched his tent 



120 SAINT PATRICK, 

on a hill quite near to Tarah. It may have been 
the time of Easter, and he may have kept it accord- 
ing to the general custom of the fifth century. The 
practice of setting apart certain days for worship, 
in memory of great events in the life of our Lord, 
grew up quite early in the Churcli. It sprang 
from a good intention. But it soon became a form 
and a device of men. Instead of keeping every 
Sabbath in memory of Christ's resurrection, they 
observed one day in the year, and called it Easter. 
No such custom is taught in the New Testament. 
The " holy day'^ has become a holiday with most 
of those who pay any regard to it. In the time of 
Patrick it was held more sacred. It became a 
stirring question in the Irish Church on what day 
it should be kept. The Latin Christians held to 
one day, and the Greek Christians another. We 
have little doubt that Patrick kept Easter in the 
Greek manner (if he kept it at all), for thus did 
the Irish Church in later centuries. But we are 
far from being sure that he went to Tarah at 
Easter-tide, and that his " paschal fire'' on the hill 
drew the attention of the king and threw the whole 
court into commotion. 

Romish biographers make this a strong point 
for their dates in the life of St. Patrick. They as- 



SAINT PATRICK. 121 

sume that the Feast of Tarah was celebrated at 
the vernal equinox. In 433 this occurred on the 
26th of March. This they take as the Easter of 
that year. They also assume that Patrick kept his 
first Easter in Ireland that very year. According 
to their story he must have done a great deal of 
sailing, foot-travelling and open-air preaching 
during the winter months. But the year 441 
w^ould better agree with their own argument^ drawn 
from the movements of the sun. Also it seems that 
the feast of Tarah came off in May, for Beltine^s 
day is still fixed at that time among the Irish and 
the Scottish Highlanders. Some ancient author- 
ities, however, fix the convention of Tarah about 
the first of November, a time still further from the 
Christian Easter. Moreover, there is some evidence 
that Saint Patrick was not at Tarah for several 
years after his arrival in Ireland.'^ Indeed we 
should not be guilty of very great incredulity if 
we doubted whether he was ever there at all when 
such a convention was held. The proof, to say the 
least of it, is by no means conclusive. 

There was a vast work before the missionary. 
A heathen religion must be overthrown, one of 
the most powerful and interesting of the ancient 
-^Todd's St. Patrick, pp. 412-420. 



122 



SAINT PATRICK. 



systems of errors. "We must therefore give a little 
attention to the Druids, their customs, their super- 
stitionSj their poets, their priests and their influence 
over both rulers and people. 




CHAPTER VIII. 

THE DRUIDS. 

Througli untold ages past there stood 
A deep, wild, sacred, awful wood : 
Its interwoven boughs had made 
A cheerless, chilly, silent shade : 
There, underneath the gloomy trees, 
Were oft performed the mysteries 
Of barbarous priests, who thought that God 
Loved to look down upon the sod 
Where every leaf was deeply stained 
With blood from human victims drained. 

LucAN, iii, 399. 

^H ' £( ' 



G) 



PON the larger branches of old oaks grew 
the mistletoe. It was a shrub fixing its roots 
into the wood of the tree, and there it ap- 
peared dark and green through all the 
winter, with white berries upon it. It is often seen 
in forests along our Western rivers. I have seen 
one specimen upon a white oak as far to the north 
as the southern shores of Lake Michigan. The 
mistletoe was held sacred by the heathens of 
Northern Europe. The shade of the oak on which 

323 



124 SAINT FA TRICK. 

it grew was their place of worship. Hence, pro- 
bably, the name Druids, or the men of the oaks. 

We imagine ourselves in Ireland, far back, four- 
teen centuries ago. We stand upon a hill with a 
village in front of us, just on the border of a thick, 
wild forest. It is one of the first evenings in May. 
Out of some cabins and cells we see strange-looking 
men creeping. They walk about very solemnly, 
and whisper something which to us is very 
mysterious. They are venerable long-beards and 
magicians. Some of them wear coats of many 
colours, and a string of serpent's eggs about their 
necks. Others have a white scarf thrown over 
their shoulders, bracelets on their arms and long 
white rods in their hands. They gaze at the stars, 
and decide that it is the proper time for their sacred 
rites. The moon is just six days old. They gather 
about their chief, but we prefer not to be in their 
crowd. 

In solemn procession they march into the dark, 
gloomy woods. Under an ancient oak they halt 
and engage in a strange mummery. One of their 
priests climbs the oak, and with the golden knife 
cuts away the wondrous mistletoe. Carefully he 
throws it down upon a white cloth, and they quite 
adore it. Every leaf is a treasure. They think it 



SAINT PATRICK, 125 

has power to charm away evil spirits and keep 
them in health. 

But this is not all. They have led with them 
two white bullocks for sacrifice. They now put a 
wreath of oak leaves upon their horns, and pre- 
pare for solemn rites. The golden knife is 
plunged into the necks of these victims, w^hich 
fall quivering in the pangs of death. The fires 
are kindled. Skilful hands make all the arrange- 
ments for a feast."^ We will not suppose ourselves 
to be gazing upon a more horrid sight, for the 
Druids are represented as leading into the gloomy 
woods some slave, or prisoner of war, or the child 
of some peasant, and there offering a human sacri- 
fice. At such times the singing priests are said to 
have roared and howled and beat their drums to 
drown the cries of the suffering martyrs. Caesar 
tells us that the Druids of Gaul made huge baskets 
of osier, in the shape of a man, filled them with 
human beings, and set the vast mass on fire.f 
Let us hope that the ancient Irish were not so 
barbarous. 

Such w^orship reminds us of the horrid rites of 
sacrifice to Baal and Moloch. It has been sup- 

* Plinj, lib. xvi. cap. 44. 
f Commentaries, lib. vi. 16. 



126 SAINT PATRICK, 

posed that Druidism came from the Phoenicians, 
from whom the Hebrews derived their worst forms 
of idolatry. The Druids had their Baal, as ap- 
pears from their Beltine'*' fires. To face the sun 
was to be about right in the world. The word 
south meant rights and north meant wrong. If one 
was beginning any work, he must first look toward 
the sun if he would prosper. A boat going to 
sea must turn sunwise. As soon as people were 
married they must make a turn sunwise. The 
dead were borne sunwise to the grave. Perhaps 
this was one reason w^hv Dichu wished the new 
church to face the south. The fronting of build- 
ings toward the east may have had a similar mean- 
ing. Certain men, who think that they must turn 
toward sunrise when saying their prayers, may 
ask whether they do not take their custom from 
the Druids, whose priests were likely to do the 
same thing. Thus follies creep into the very 
Church of Christ. They perhaps adored the sun, 
but they do not seem to have made idols. They 
held that their gods v/ere omnipresent, and to be 
worshipped in roofless temples or within large 
circles of stones. Some writers have thought that 

* Beal-tain, Beal's fire-day. Beal means the sun; in honour 
of the sun the fire was made. 



SAINT PA TRICK. 127 

ihey had their chief seats in Ireland and on the 
Isle of Man ; thence they spread over Britain and 
into Gaul. 

Saint Patrick might lay hold of some of their 
doctrines, and thus gain a footing for his own. 
They were ready to listen when he told them that 
God w^as everywhere, always having his eye upon 
their deeds. They believed in the immortality of 
the soul, and had some crude ideas of future re- 
w^ards and punishments. They taught that there 
was another world, where the good souls preserved 
their identity and their habits. The souls of bad 
men, they thought, passed into lower animals to 
be chastised. At funerals letters were burnt, for 
the dead to read or carry to those who had gone 
before them across the borders of the spirit-land. 
Money was also loaned to the departed, on condi- 
tion that it should be repaid in the world to come."^ 
The priests were careful to be the bankers, quite as 
certain priests now are, who receive money to pur- 
chase souls out of purgatory. But what a w^ork 
to clear a few truths from a mass of errors ! The 
missionary must preach Christ, who offered the 
only redeeming sacrifice, and brought life and im- 
mortality to light in the gospel. He must declare 
* Michelet, Hist. France, i. chap. 2. 



128 SAINT PATRICK. 

the facts of a judgment, a hell, a heaven, and an 
eternity. Druidism was to the ancient Irish what 
Brahminism now is to the Asiatics ; the work of 
Patrick was quite similar to that of the modern 
missionary among the Hindoos. 

In going to Tarah, the citadel of Druidism, 
Patrick must meet the priests and bards of a false 
religion. These men had great influence at the 
royal court, and to this day it remains in Ireland, 
as ^^Kirwan'' has shown us : 

"The power of these priests was very great. 
They directed in all sacred things — they offered all 
sacrifices — they were the teachers of the youth, 
and the judges in all disputes public and private. 
Their supreme pontiff was elected by these priests 
in conclave assembled; and he was called the Arch-- 
druid, and possessed power without check or con- 
trol. Whilst thus the ministers of the law, they 
enforced their decisions by religious sanctions, and 
if any refused obedience to their decrees they for- 
bid their presence at all religious sacrifices. The 
persons thus doomed were regarded as accursed, 
and were shunned as were those white with leprosy 
by the Jews. 

" These priests were exempt from war and from 
taxation, and were regarded with the deepest vene- 



SAINT PATRICK. 129 

ration. Their learning was not committed to 
writing, lest it should go down among the people; 
it was committed to memory, and was thus trans- 
mitted from one to anotlier. When they commit- 
ted anything to writing, it is said they used the 
Greek language, of which the people were utterly 
ignorant. 

" Many of the customs and superstitions which 
now exist in Ireland, and which are wielded with 
great power by the priests to gain their purposes, 
existed there long before the days of Saint Patrick. 
The peasantry now bury their dead with peculiar 
rites ; they have their wakes, when the neighbours 
watch with the dead and carouse ; lighted candles 
are placed around the corpse ; the dead are taken 
to the grave followed by the wailing multitudes, 
and are buried with their feet toward the. east. So 
it was two thousand years ago ; thus Dathy, the 
last pagan prince of the country, was buried. 

'' They have now their holy wells in Ireland. 
They exist in great numbers in every part of the 
country ; and all have a history w^hich connects 
them with the fantastic doings of some saint or 
saintess in remote antiquity. It is truly painful to 
gee the deep paths worn by pilgrims to them, going 
round and round them on their knees, doing pen- 

9 



130 SAINT PATRICK, 

ance for their sins. At the canonical time for 
visiting these wells the paths around them are red 
with the blood of the poor pilgrims. Around these 
wells are rude stones, among which the poor people 
stuff some of their rags, and even some of their 
hair, as a witness, If necessary, of their visit ; and 
around these wells are holy bushes, on which are 
always streaming some fragments of pilgrim gar- 
ments to put the guardian saint of the well in mind 
of ' the stations' there performed. As to these 
wells there can be no doubt ; I have visited them 
recently, and have seen the things now described. 
The name of Saint Patrick, and of a Saint Bridget, 
are widely associated with these fountains; but 
they were regarded as holy before the Christian era ; 
and the penances now performed around them, and 
in the same manner and form, were performed 
iil obedience to Druid priests two thousand years 
ago. Indeed, Thomas Moore, himself a papist, 
admits that the holy St. Bridget, of whom Alban 
Butler so piously writes, was the Vesta of the fire- 
worshippers ; and that the nuns of St. Bridget were 
only the Druidesses continued under a new name ! 

^* Who, born In Ireland, or descended from Irish 
parents, has not heard of fairies, and of their doings 
and antics, until he has feared If not believed their 



SA INT PA TRICK, 131 

existence ? There is scarcely any form of supersti- 
tion which has more generally seized on the Irish 
mind than this. The shoe of an ass is often nailed 
on the door-sill to keep oif the fairies. The priests 
bless amuletSj which are sold for ^ a compensation/ 
and are worn around the neck, to keep off* the 
wutches and the fairies ! When a boy or girl sent 
to a Protestant school gets sick, the priest, even in 
our own day, tells the parents that their child is 
bewitched in punishment for going to those aw^ful 
schools, and offers to drive off* the witches for ' a 
compensation,^ and on the condition that the child 
be w^ithdrawn from the schools. If the child gets 
well, the priest has the credit ; if it dies, the 
parents and child have gone too far to have the 
punishment remitted ! But these fairy legends 
and superstitions are of Druid origin, and have 
been adopted and transmitted by the priests to 
w^ork upon the fears of the people. 

"There are bushes sacred to the fairies, and 
^ pleasant hills^ where they love to congregate, and 
lonely towers amid whose ruins they love to gam- 
bol by moonlight, and groves sacred to their sports 
and meetings. To cut down a fairy bush is even 
now a sacrilege among the ignorant. And the in- 
stances are not, even in our day, unfrequent of a 



132 SAINT PATRICK. 

peasant removing his cabin when ignorantly built 
on the pathway of the fairies, or when found in 
their way when opening up a new path. All, again 
of Druidic origin, whose priests had their fairies, 
and their bushes, their hills, groves and places 
sacred to them ! 

*^ The Irish peasantry have a remarkable fond- 
ness for bonfires. On Saint John's Eve they 
kindle them on the hill-tops all over the country. 
The lovely Charlotte Elizabeth thus describes one 
of these of which she was a witness : The pile, 
composed of turf, bog- wood and other combustibles, 
was built to a great height. ^ Early in the evening 
the peasants began to assemble, all habited in their 
best array, glowing with health ; I had never seen 
anything resembling it ; and was exceedingly de- 
lighted with their handsome, intelligent, merry 
faces. The fire being kindled, a splendid blaze 
shot up. After a pause the ground was cleared in 
the front of an old piper, the very beau-ideal of 
drollery and shrewdness, who, seated in a low 
chair, with a well-replenished jug by his side, 
screwed his pipes to the liveliest tunes, and the 
endless jig began. 

^^^When the fire burned low, an indispensable 
part of the ceremony commenced. Every one 



SAINT PATRICK, 133 

present of the peasantry passed through it, and 
several children were thrown across the sparkling 
embers/ And after describing other ludicrous 
scenes, she remarks^ ^Here was the old pagan wor- 
ship of Baal, if not of Moloch too, carried on 
openly and universally in the heart of a nominally 
Christian country, and by millions professing the 
Christian name. I was confounded, for I did not 
know, then, that Popery is only a crafty adapta- 
tion of pagan idolatries to its own scheme/ 

" The Druids were fire-worshippers, as were the 
Asiatics from whom they were descended. The 
priests of Rome adopted the days and the customs 
consecrated to the worship of fire; they called the 
days after a saint, and gave to the ceremonies a 
papal significance; and thus perpetuated the cere- 
monies of the Druids to our time. 

" The kings had their bards, as had also all the 
great aristocratic families. These bards became, 
in time, a privileged class, and exercised great in- 
fluence. They were the chief chroniclers; they 
kept the family genealogies; they cast into rude 
verse the deeds of their heroes, and, like Homer in 
Greece, recited them on public occasions. On 
great occasions, and at all great festivals, these 
bards were present. By their example they ex- 



134 SAINT PA THICK, 

cited the youth to the cultivation of oratory, and 
by their fervid appeals they swayed the multitude, 
and filled them with the highest enthusiasm. 
They moved the people as the high winds move 
the trees of the forest. They would seize their 
harps and play and sing their own national songs, 
in which the people would join, until the family, 
provincial, or national spirit was intensely excited, 
when all were ready to go forth to deeds of 
heroism or of rapine. And the names of some 
of these bards, or Fileas, are retained and 
honoured among the people of the country to the 
present day. Had the productions of these bards 
escaped the wrecks of time, Ireland, too, might 
have its Homer, its Virgil, its Horace and its 
Ossian ! 

"There are long and dreary annals running 
through ages, which record little else than the rise 
and fall of kings — the wars between provinces and 
petty nobles — the insurrections of the peasants 
against their oppressors — and the way in which 
nobles at the head of their retainers ravaged 
the island, and destroyed everything by fire and 
sword. By causes like these, and by the bloody 
rites and superstitions of the Druids, the people 
were wasted and brutalized. The arts introduced 



SAINT PATRICK. 135 

by the first colonists were neglected — agriculture 
was forsaken; and, save at intervals few and far 
between, the entire island w^as agitated by the 
jealousies and conflicts of contending princes and 
nobles, until in the process of time the people were 
buried in profound barbarism and ignorance. 

'^Through those obscure ages rose various cus- 
toms, traces of which are now visible. » The people 
were divided in ranks and grades. These grades 
were designated by the number of colours they 
were permitted to wear; the lowest could wear but 
one, and none but the royal family could wear 
seven. The rank next to royalty was composed 
of the learned order; these wore six colours, which 
shows the high estimation of learning in that early 
day. This custom is the origin of the Scotch plaid 
w^orn b}^ the Highlanders down to our own times. 

The Irish are proverbial for their hospitality. 
In those early times provisions were made by law 
for strangers and travellers, by creating an order 
of nobility called entertainers. These dignitaries 
w^ere required to be the proprietors of seven town- 
lands; to have seven ploughs at work; to have 
seven herds of cows, each herd to contain one 
hundred and forty; their mansion was required to 
be accessible by four different avenues ; and a hog, 



136 SAINT PATRICK. 

sheep and beef were required to be in constant 
preparation, that whoever called should be fed 
without delay. And all was gratuitous. Thus 
the hospitality of the Milesians was without a 
parallel in Europe; and such is the character of 
the Irish people to the present time. The houses 
of the Irish gentry are now as open as they were 
under the law promulged from the old halls of 
Tarah ; and in the poorest mud cottage on the side 
of the moor you will receive a kind welcome, 
and, if you are in want, a warmth of sympathy 
that will divide with you the last cup of porridge 
or the last potato. 'An Irish welcome' is pro- 
verbial in all the earth for cheerfulness, heartiness 
and truthfulness. And the Milesians have carried 
with them into all the lands of their dispersion this 
characteristic of their ancestry. May they never 
lose it! 

"These are national characteristics which have 
their foundation in institutions older than our 
Christianity; and which, because of the stationary 
principle which has obtained in Ireland, have been 
transmitted to our time. Once break, as it must 
be broken in our country, the influence of that old 
stationary principle ; save the native impulses of 
the Milesians, but elevate them above the influence 



SAINT PATRICK. 137 

of the social and Druidical laws of old OUamh 
Fodhla, and the conventions of Tarah, — and you 
have material out of which to form as noble a 
people as walk the earth/^* 

If Druidism thus stamped itself upon a people, 
so that its customs were not all removed bv Chris- 
tianity, what must it have been when Saint Patrick 
began his labours in Ireland ? Its priests and poets 
Avere the learned men of the country. Twenty 
years of study were required to educate a Druid. 
He knew something of the sciences of mathematics, 
astronomy, rhetoric, law, medicine and moral 
philosophy. He was skilled in the arts of magic. 
His knowledge w^as condensed into triads, or 
sentences each containing three strong points. 
One triad ran thus : ^^ The first three principles of 
wisdom are — obedience to the laws of God, care for 
the welfare of man and fortitude under the acci- 
dents of life.^^ 

Woe to Saint Patrick if a Druid grew jealous! 
A single w^ord from a Druid for ever withered a 
human being ; he was " cut down like grass.'^ He 
always had the king's ear, and at his whisper the 
cruel order w^ent forth to slay the hated man. On 

* Ireland and the Irish, by Kir wan (Eev. N. Murray, D. D.), 
N, Y, ObserveTy 1855. 



138 SAINT PATRICK. 

his Up was war or peace; in his hand the golden 
knife for the throat of the condemned; at the 
sound of his rude lyre the people rose to the work 
of vengeance; on his word the doom of a kingdom 
hung. The loyalty of the land was a religion of 
w^onder and fear, and to dispute with a Druid was 
a crime against the state.* 

Woe also to the disciples of Saint Patrick if 
they kept back the tax claimed by the Druids! 
The chief Druid of every district required all 
families, rich or poor, to pay him certain annual 
dues. On an evening in autumn they must put 
out every fire in their houses. It seems to have 
been at the time of the convention of Tarah. 
Then every man must appear and pay his tax. 
If he failed, he was the object of terrible ven- 
geance. To be with a fire in the house, and with- 
out money in the hand, was a crime. The next 
morning the Druid priest allowed every man to 
take some of his own sacred fire, and rekindle the 
flame on his own hearth. It was a crime for one 
man to lend a living coal to his neighbour ; if he 
did it, he was reduced to poverty and declared an 
outlaw.f To be a Christian one must renounce 

^ Disraeli, Amenities, i. 1. 

t Toland's His. Druids, pp. 71. 72. 



SAINT PATRICK, 139 

such customs of superstitlou at the peril of his 
life. Also, if he saw ^^the fiery cross^^ borne on 
the hills, he must rush to the rallying-place of the 
clans. The chieftain had slain a goat^ dipped in 
its blood the ends of a wooden cross^ set it on fire, 
given it to the clansman, and told him to run and 
wave it on the hill-tops. When his breath w^as 
gone, another would take it up and repeat the 
signal. The man who did not obey the summons 
w^as doomed. 



w 



y^^A^ 




CHAPTER IX. 

SAINT PATRICK'S ARMOUR. 

THE story is tliat King Laogaire and his court 
were preparing for the great feast held at 
the time of the convention at Tarah. One 
^^3 of the oldest writers upon Saint Patrick, in 
his fondness for the Scripture style, says : " Now 
there happened in that year the idolatrous festival 
which the Gentiles were wont to observe with many 
incantations and magical inventions, and some other 
superstitions of idolatry; gathering together the 
kirgs, satraps, dukes, chieftains and nobles of the 
people; summoning the magicians, enchanters, 
augurs, with the inventors or teachers of every art 
and gift, unto Laogaire (as unto King Nebuchad- 
nezzar of old) to Tarah, which was their Babylon. 
. . . They were worshipping and exercising them- 
selves in that Gentile festivity.^^ * 

Every fire was to be put out in the land, and it 
was " made known by proclamation to all that 

^ Muirchu Maccu-Machtene, an Irish writer supposed to be 
of the seventh century. — Vide TodiTs Saint Patrick^ chap. iii. 
140 



SAINT PATRICK, 141 

whosoever should, on that night, kindle a fire before 
the king's fire had been kindled on the hill of 
Tarah, that soul should be cut off from his people.'^ 
We may imagine that 

" The king was seated on a royal throne, 
And in his face majestic greatness shone : 
A monarch for heroic deeds designed, 
For noble acts become a noble mind : 
About him, summoned by his strict command, 
The peers, the priests and commons of the land, 
In princely state and solemn order stand." 

The night is falling. Not yet have the Druids 
struck their sacred fire on the hill of Tarah. Death 
to the man who dares to kindle his own in the very 
teeth of the law ! The king looks out of his 
window" ; the glare of a distant flame catches his 
eye. He is amazed. Is his sovereignty despised ? 
" Who is this that sets at naught the law f^ he 
inquires. " Who is so defiant as to light his fire 
just in sight of my palace ?^^ 

'' Death to him V^ mutter the Druid counsellors, 
who are in still greater alarm. All eyes stand out 
with astonishment. The word runs though the 
halls, " There is a fire on yonder hill.^^ 

^' What shall be done?^^ asks the king, who is 
scarcely permitted to have a mind of his own. It 



142 SAINT PATRICK. 

IS a religious offence ; the priests must give their 
advice. 

^^ O king, live for ever !'^ is the reply of the 
Druids, as framed by our old author, who labours 
to imitate the style of Scripture and make the 
scene parallel to events in DaniePs time. '' This 
fire which w^e see shall never be extinguished to all 
eternity unless we put it out to-night. Moreover, 
it shall prevail over all the fires of our wonted ob- 
servance ; and he who has kindled it shall prevail 
over us and over thyself, and shall win away from 
thee all the men of thy kingdom.^^ Well had it 
been for the Druids if they had known Scripture 
so familiarly as to play thus upon the words of 
Daniel to the king in Babylon ! They would not 
have been in such alarm. 

" Now/^ continues our author, ^' when King 
Laogaire heard all these things he was greatly 
troubled, as Herod was of old, and all the city of 
Tarah with him. And he answered and said, 
^ This shall not be so, but we will now go and see 
the end of the matter, and we will take and kill 
the men w^ho are doing such wickedness against 
our kingdom.^ ^^ 

The story is, that the king set out for the fire- 
crowned hill; with numerous courtiers in his train. 



SAINT PATRICK. 143 

The Druids would not permit the king nor any of 
the valiant knights to venture too close, lest some 
strange power should injure them. Coming to a 
halt, they advised that the daring intruder should 
be brought into the royal presence. " Let none 
rise up at his coming/^ said they, " nor pay him 
any respect, lest he win them by his arts.^^ 

The man Avas ordered to appear. He at once 
obeyed. He entered amono; the horses and chariots 
and the array of courtiers, chanting the words, 
^^ Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but 
we will remember the name of the Lord our God.^^ 
All eyes were upon the dignified and courageous 
stranger. One of the royal attendants rose up from 
respect to him. This was Ere Mac Dego, a noble 
young man, to whom the stranger said, ^' Why do 
you alone rise up to me in honour of my God.^' 

" I know not why,^^ was the answer ; " it seems 
as if fire comes from your lips to mine.'^ 

^' Wilt thou receive the baptism of the Lord T^ 
" I wiir receive it when I know who thou art.^^ 
" I am Patrick, a messenger of Christ to all who 
will hear the truth of heaven." We are not bound 
to believe all this, even after having culled a few 
reasonable statements from a mass of absurdities. 
But there is added in the legends an account of 



144 SAINT PATRICK. 

wonders performed by Patrick^ modelled after the 
miracles wrought by the hand of Moses before 
Pharaoh, except that Moses is utterly outdone. 
Very coolly does Father Brenan say : " The con- 
ference which on this occasion took place between 
Saint Patrick and Laogaire is so interwoven with 
unattested and incredible anecdote that it might 
perhaps be as well passed over.* "VVe pass it over. 

The king is furious. He orders his people to 
seize Patrick. But the fearless missionary chants 
the words, " Let God arise, and let his enemies be 
scattered.'^ We may suppose that he explained the 
matter of his fire on the hill. It had nothing to 
do with Easter, and, even if it had, the royal pagan 
would have cared nothing for that. It was kindled 
before his tent, simply to expel the chill of an 
October night. The king is appeased. Irish wrath 
quickly gives way to a generous Irish forgiveness. 
As the missionary is a stranger, he shall receive 
Irish hospitality from some of the nobles. 

The next day, Patrick, with five of his compan- 
ions, enters the hall where the court is feasting. 
The king's chief bard rises to greet him. This is 
Dubtach, a Druid of great learning and fame. 
With him also rises the young poet Fiacc, a stu- 
^ Eccl. Hist. Ireland, p. 14. 



SA INT PA TRICK, 145 

dent whom he taught in the Druid lore. They 
listen while the missionary preaches what they 
never heard before. He is represented as saying to 
the king and the magnates of the convention : 
^^ You worship the sun ; you adore the light ; it is 
but a mere creature. That sun which you see rises 
daily for our good at the command of the Al- 
mighty, but its splendour shall not always endure. 
The day will come when its light shall be extin- 
guished, and all those that worship it shall misera- 
bly perish. But we adore the true Sun, Christ the 
Lord and Ruler of all the world.'^ The poet-lau- 
reate and his young disciple saw the folly of the 
fire-worship, the leading doctrine of Irish Druid- 
ism. They renounced the system. They believed 
the word and were the first converts at Tarah. 
The younger of these two poets might have found 
a genial friend in Benignus, the sweet singer of the 
Irish Israel. The king was touched by the prayer 
of Patrick. Troubled, fearing, trembling and seek- 
ing relief, he said to his counsellors : " It is better 
for me to believe than to dieJ' He professed him- 
self a believer in Christ. But it would take a 
large mantle of charity to cover his sins. He 
seems to have acted from policy, rather than prin- 
ciple. The account is, that many at Tarah believed, 

10 



146 SAINT PATRICK. 

and that ^^ Patrick baptized many thousand men on 
that day/^ No doubt this is an exaggeration. 

We may know much of Saint Patrick^s spirit 
amid these scenes if we may give credit to an an- 
cient Irish hymn as one written by himself. It 
is often called Saint Patrick's Armour. It is in 
the style of a lorica or prayer against all evil 
powers. Some parts of it are still remembered by 
the Irish peasantry^ and repeated at bed-time as a 
protection from evil. Thus w^ords of devotion 
have been turned to a sort of superstitious dream. 
" That this hymn is a composition of great anti- 
quity cannot be questioned. It is written in a 
very ancient dialect of the Irish Celtic. ... It 
notices no doctrine or practice of the Church that 
is not known to have existed before the fifth cen- 
tury. . . . We may not^ therefore, err very much in 
taking this hymn as a fair representation of Saint 
Patrick's faith and teacliing. Whether it was 
actually written by him or not, it w-as certainly 
composed at a period not very far distant from his 
times, with a view to represent and put forth his 
sentiments. . . . Notwithstanding some tincture of 
superstition, we find the pure and undoubted truths 
of Christianity, a firm faith in the protecting 
providence and power of God ; and Christ is made 



>S'^ INT PA TRICK. 117 

all and In all.* None of the peculiar errors of 
the Rome of the eighth century are found in it. 
"Were it ^^ a pious fraud^^ of the monks, it would 
certainly have had praises to the Virgin Mary, ap- 
peals to angels and saints, and hints concerning the 
power of relics, charms and rosaries. It is thus 
literally rendered by Dr. Todd : 

I. I bind to myself t to-day 

The strong power of the invocation of the Trinity, 
The faith of the Trinity in Unity, 
The Creator of the elements. 

II. I bind to myself to-day 

The power of the incarnation of Christ, 

With that of his baptism ; 

The power of the crucifixion, 

With that of his burial ; 

The. power of the resurrection, 

W^ith [that of] the ascension ; 

The power of the coming 

To the sentence of judgment. 

III. I bind to myself to-day 

The power of the love of seraphim. 

In the obedience of angels, 

In the hope of resurrection unto reward, 

^ Todd's St. Patrick, pp. 425-432. 

f Dr. Todd shows that this is the true rendering of the word 
Atomriug, usually translated '^ At Tarah." This lessens the 
evidence that the hymn was first used at this royal seat. 



148 SAINT PATRICK, 

In the prayers of the noble fathers, 

In the predictions of the prophets, 

In the preaching of apostles, 

In the faith of confessors, 

In the purity of holy virgins. 

In the acts of righteous men. 

IV. I bind to myself to-day 
The power of heaven, 
The light of the sun. 
The whiteness of snow, 
The force of fire, 
The flashing of lightning. 
The velocity of wind, 
The depth of the sea. 
The stability of the earth. 
The hardness of rocks. 

V. I bind to myself to-day 

The power of God to guide me. 
The might of God to uphold me. 
The wisdom of God to teach me. 
The eye of God to watch over me, 
The ear of God to hear me, 
The word of God to give me speech, 
The hand of God to protect me. 
The way of God to prevent me, 
The shield of God to shelter me. 
The host of God to defend me, 

Against the snares of demons. 
Against the temptations of vices, 



SAINT PA TRICK. 149 

Against the lasts of nature, 

Against every man who meditates injury to me, 

Whether far or near, 

With few or with many. 

YI. I have set around me all these powers, 
Against every hostile, savage power 
Directed against my body and my soul ; 
Against the incantations of false i)rophets, 
Against the black laws of heathenism, 
Against the false laws of heresy, 
Against the deceits of idolatry. 

Against the spells of women, and smiths, and Druids, 
Against all knowledge which blinds the soul of man. 

VIT. Christ, protect me to-day 

Against poison, against burning, 
Against drowning, against wound, 
That I may receive abundant reward. 

yill. Christ with me, Christ before me, 

Christ behind me, Christ within me, 
Christ beneath me, Christ above me, 
Christ at my right, Christ at my left, 
Christ in the fort [when I am at home], 
Christ in the chariot-seat [when I travel], 
Christ in the ship [when I sail]. 

IX. Christ in the heart of every man 
W^ho thinks of me ,* 
Christ in the mouth of every man 
W^ho speaks to me ; 



150 



SAINT PA THICK, 



Christ in every eye that sees me, 
Christ in every ear that hears me. 

X. Of the Lord is salvation, 
Christ is salvation, 
With us ever be 
Thy salvation, O Lord. 





CHAPTER X. 

CAUSES OF SUCCESS. 

j/ij T is not our intention to relate all the travels 

1 and heroic adventures attributed to Saint 
i ill 

Patrick by those biographers who have 

dealt largely in the wonderful and mirac- 
ulous. They rarely ascribed to him a failure; 
almost every prince whom he visits is suddenly 
converted; wherever he goes w^hole districts are 
won to the faith, and a bishop is placed over the 
group of churches. This looks suspicious on its 
very face. The greatest missionaries, from the 
Apostle Paul downward, have had defeats. Uni- 
form success has rarely been the rule in human 
toils. The wise advantage taken of a defeat is 
quite as much to the honour of a hero as an un- 
broken series of victories. 

No doubt there was some romance in his preach- 
ing, and on his journeys various strange exploits. 
But the tendency has been to exaggerate his la- 
bours. ^' Many of those adventures were evidently 
invented to pay a* compliment to certain tribes, or 

151 



152 SAINT PATRICK, 

clans^ by ascribing the conversion of their ances- 
tors to the preaching of Saint Patrick. Others 
were intended to claim for certain churches, or 
monasteries, the honour of having been by him 
founded: and others, again, were framed with the 
object of supporting the pretensions of the see of 
Armagh to the possession of lands or jurisdiction 
in various parts of Ireland.'^* Very singular is 
it, if he made so many dioceses, that one modern 
author names twentyf of them as founded before 
the close of the fifth century. Of this statement 
we shall find hereafter an explanation. They were 
central, missionary churches, each having a bishop 
in the sense of a pastor over his own flock, and 
the general oversight of the little bands of Chris- 
tians in his district. 

What were the causes of PatricFs success f On 
this question we may hang what is farther to be re- 
lated. We shall take those statements which seem 
most likely to be true, illustrating them with such 
anecdotes as exhibit the character of the man and 
of his religious teachings. 

A commanding presence seems to have lent its 
aid. Tradition portrays him as attractive, venera- 

* Todd's St. Patrick, 400. 

f Brenan, Eccl. Hist. Ireland^ chap. ii. 



SAINT PATRICK. 153 

ble and dignified in his appearance. In his looks 
there was a majesty of love and truth. A portly 
frame^ open countenance and imposing manner are 
not essential elements of usefulness. The Apostle 
Paul was '' in bodily presence contemptible/^ but 
be was a preacher of tremendous power. The ar- 
dent piety shining forth through uncomely features 
is often a means of grace. Yet among an igno- 
rant, superstitious^ barbarous people there is a force 
in a noble presence. Chieftains appear to have 
seen something in Patrick more stately than w^as in 
themselves. 

He went from Tarah to the Tailten races. The 
court resorted thither to engage in the royal di- 
versions. A modern Irish fair would be a more 
promising scene for preaching. But in spite of the 
tilts, tournaments and rough sports of the Irish 
Olympia, he gained the heart of large numbers of 
people. He bade fair to turn the amusements into 
solemn exercises. The Druid of longest^ grayest 
beard could not thus sway the multitude. Num- 
bers listened and believed, according to the tradi- 
tions. But the king's brother, Carbri, son of the 
great Niall of the Nine^ostages, grew angry when 
he feared that the games would be spoiled. It is 
likely that a Druid whispered revenge in his ear. 



154 SAINT PATRICK. 

He first sought to kill the missionary, but his 
brother Conall warded off the blow. He then 
caused Patrick's helpers to be beaten and thrown 
into the Blackwater. They were not drowned. 
Persecution won them sympathy. 

Conall opened the doors of his heart and home 
to the preacher, inquired the way of life, believed 
on the Lord, and with great joy was baptized ; thus 
accepting brotherhood with the lowliest peasant 
who had bound himself to Christ. Months of 
preaching were passed in this region. '^Show 
kindness to my believing children,'^ said the mis- 
sionary, ^^and be just all the days of your life.'' 

" I devote to the Lord," said the prince, " the 
site for a church.'^ He measured the ground with 
his own feet, and ordered that it should be sixty 
foot-lengths long. There stood the building which 
took the name of ^^ the Great Church of Patrick." 
This Conall was the great-grandfather of Coluni- 
ba, the renowned missionary at lona and in West- 
ern Scotland. 

His mode of teaching is w^orthy of note. It was 
direct, full of truth and forcible. It related to 
Christ rather than to the Church. A very curious 
and ancient anecdote, whether true or false, affords 
a specimen of what was believed to be his manner 



SAINT PATRICK. 155 

of instructing the ignorant. He crossed the Shan- 
non and went into Connaught^ and lingered near 
the Mount of the Druids in Roscommon. Perhaps 
he mused upon the fact that races perish from the 
earth as well as men, as he passed by the cemetery 
of the ancient kings. Perhaps he found hospitality 
in the royal fort. Near it was a well-known foun- 
tain. Thither he and his companions- went one 
morning, it would seem, to talk with those who 
came for water. The little company was afterward 
magnified into '' a synod of holy bishops V^ It is 
said that there they lifted their early song of praise 
to God. 

It appears that King Laogaire had sent two of 
his daughters into this neighbourhood, and placed 
them under the care of tw^o Druids. For a morn- 
ing walk they came to the fountain, and were much 
surprised to meet the strangers, not being quite 
sure but they were '^ men of the hills,^^ or half 
gods, who were supposed to dwell in the mountain 
caves. .« 

'^ Whence are ye ?'^ they asked, " and whence 
come ye?'' 

^^ It were better for you to confess to our true 
God than to inquire concerning our race.'' 

^^ Who is God, and where does he dwell?" the 



156 SAINT PATRICK, 

elder asked. '^ Has he sons and daughters, silver 
and gold ? Is he ever-living ? Does he love his 
children ? Are they beautiful ? Tell us of him. 
How shall he be seen ? Is it in youth or in old 
age that he is to be found f^ 

" Our God is the God of all men/^ answered 
Patrick. '' He is the God of heaven and earth, 
the sea and the rivers, the mountains and the 
valleys, the sun, the moon and the stars. He is 
in heaven, and above heaven. He dwells also on 
the earth. He gives life to all things — light to the 
sun, stars to the sky, w^ater to the fountains, and 
he upholds all beings.^^ 

How different was he from the gods of the 
Druids ! If we had never heard of the true God, 
we might understand how the king^s daughters 
wondered. But they were to hear a still greater 
truth — one w^hich had power to win the heart of all 
who will give due heed to it. Those, who call it a 
mystery and treat it with neglect, know not how 
])recious it is^to the sinner seeking the way to be 
saved. 

"He hath a Son co-eternal and co-equal with 
himself/^ continued Patrick. ^' The Son is not 
younger than the Father; nor the Father older 
than the Son. And the Holy Ghost brcathcth in 



SAINT PATRICK. 157 

them.* The Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost 
are not divided. But I wish to unite you to the 
heavenly King, as ye are the daughters of an 
earthly king ; that is, to believe/^ 

" Teach us most diligently how we may believe 
in the heavenly King. Show us how we may see 
him face to face, and whatsoever thou wilt say unto 
us we will do V' / 

No doubt here is a blank in the lesson. If the 
scene were real, the plain requirements must have 
been taught. And Patrick said : '^ Believe ye that 
by baptism ye put off the sin of your father and 
your mother V^ f 

'' We believe.'' 

^^ Believe ye in repentance after sin ?'' 

'' We believe.'' 

^^ Believe ye in the unity of the Church ?" 

" We believe." 

Nothing more is added that illustrates Patrick's 
method of teaching. In this there is not all that 

^"Inflat in eis/^ proceedeth from tliem, would have been 
the truth. 

f The error here may have been that of the biographer, 
rather than of Patrick. Original sin is not put away by bap- 
tism ; its removal by Christ may be indicated. The sign must 
not be taken for the cause. This error grew up quite early in 
some parts of the Christian Church. 



158 SA INT PA TRICK. 

we could wish. There are some errors. But there 
is nothing here of modern Romanism. On their 
confession of faith the king's daughters were bap- 
tized at the same fountain. AVhat is said of their 
wish to '^ see the face of Christ^' and their sudden 
death is evidently the boldest fiction. 

The story also is^ that their teachers were con- 
verted ^' to the repentance of God.'' They believed 
and renounced their Druidism, Near this spot a 
church arose. That many Druids were converted 
is very credible. If only a few of them had 
accepted the Christian doctrines, we should expect 
to find more persecution and less success. 

His power of adaptation must have aided 
Patrick's influence. There is a beautiful story 
which gives nobility to one of the plainest of 
plants. It is said that Patrick once came to a 
barbarous tribe and began to preach to them in the 
open air. He spoke of the Holy Trinity. They 
shook their heads. It was too sublime a mystery 
for an ignorant and faithless people, who would not 
accept as true what they couhl not comprehend. 
These rationalists grew indignant and intolerant. 
They were about to enter into the controversy with 
clubs and drive the missionary from their soil. He 
understood the wise management of human nature. 



SA INT PA TEICK. 159 

Stoo2)iDg down, he took from the green sod a sprig 
wliich had three leaves united in one, and holding 
it up he gave a simple illustration of the Trinity. 
It was the common shamrock, trodden under foot 
in the pastures and the wild woods. The ears of 
the people were gained, quite as much by the tact 
of the strange preacher as by the force of the argu- 
ment drawn from a symbol so imperfect and un- 
worthy of the theme. They listened to the proofs 
of the doctrine given in the Scriptures, and were 
convinced. The legend is that the shamrock became 
in this way a national emblem of Ireland. In our 
times many an Irish hat is decked with the sham- 
rock on Saint Patrick^s day. 

His treatment of superstition aided Patrick's in- 
fluence. It appears that he overthrew some of the 
pillar-stones, which seem to have been the chief 
objects of worship with the pagan Irish. One of 
these was the Orom-cruaeh^ or "the black stooping- 
stone.'^ Keating says it was ^'the same god that 
Zoroaster adored in Greece,'' and that this was the 
first form of idolatry introduced among " the 
Milesians.^'* Around it stood twelve lesser idols 
of brass. The spot was called "the plain of kneel- 
ing.'^ It had been a favourite resort of King 
* Hist, Ireland, p. 156, 



160 SA INT PA TR ICK. 

Laogalre. To this ^^ Moloch of Ireland" no 
doubt human victims were sacrificed. 

To this plain the ardent missionary bent his 
way. He resolved that the idol should fall. 
Romanists differ as to whether it fell at the touch 
of his ^'holy staff" or at the voice of his prayer. 
We believed in neither of these means, for it would 
involv^e a miracle. It is far more likely that he 
caused it to be smitten to the dust by blows which 
w^ere not at all mysterious. A hammer in a strong 
hand was sufficient. The people saw that such 
idols were worse than vanity. There too, it is 
said, a church was built, transmitting ^^to suc- 
ceeding ages the memory of the wonderful things 
that God had accomplished there by the ministry 
of his servant." 

Another name of the idol is thought to have 
been Crom-dubh^ whence a certain day is now called 
in Ireland, Cromduff Sunday. It may be that 
the old heathen festival was turned into a Chris- 
tian observance. The people were not willing to 
give up, altogether, their pagan revelries, and in 
their stead certain rites, more Christian, were 
adopted. It may be that Patrick showed some 
tolerance toward the old superstitions. He dealt 
tenderly with the popular usages and prejudices. 



SAINT PATRICK. 161 

He did not break in pieces all the idols of stone, 
in the spirit of the young Hebrew king, Josiah. 
The chieftains would not permit it ; the clansmen 
would rise in rebellion. On some of them he was 
content to inscribe the name of Jesus. Also the 
wells, which had long been used for heathen pur- 
poses, he allowed to be used for baptism. Near 
them churches were built, so that the people might 
walk in the old paths for a new purpose. The 
Druid fire became an Easter flame. In a later 
day this adaptation of heathen customs to Chris- 
tian rites gave rise to many evils. Even the good 
Columba said, without meaning any irreverence, 
'' My Druid is Christ.'' 

" Nothing is clearer,'' says Dr. O'Donovan, 
^^ than that Patrick engrafted Christianity on the 
pagan superstitions, with so much skill that he 
won the people over to the Christian religion be- 
fore they understood the exact diiference between 
the two systems of belief; and much of this half- 
Pagan, half-Christian religion will be found not 
only in the Irish stories of the Middle Ages, but in 
the superstitions of the peasantry to the present 
day." This is rather a sweeping charge. Without 
denying that Patrick erred in this direction, it is 

certainly unfair to lay all these results to his ac- 
11 



162 SAINT PATRICK. 

count. Those who came after him were more dis- 
posed to compromise with the old Druidic customs. 
They were ready to borrow from the heathen, as 
was then done in almost all Christendom. It was 
this, in a great measure, that made Romanism, and 
gave it popularity among every people at whose 
doors the Churches messengers were knocking. 
Gregory the Great was not a fierce iconoclast. He 
saw with regret the destruction of heathen temples. 
" He enjoined their sanctification by Christian 
rites ; the idols only were to be destroyed without 
remorse. Even the sacrifices of oxen were to con- 
tinue, but to be celebrated on the saints' days, in 
order gently to transfer the adoration of the people 
from their old to their new objects of worship.'^"^ 

Not yet is the Church rid of this faulty policy. 
It is rightly felt to be a duty both to Christianize 
society and to socialize the Church. How shall we 
adapt our religion to the demands of worldly men ? 
Shall we come down to their tastes, their customs, 
their habits? Shall we take up what is peculiar 
to their society and give it a place in the Church? 
Shall we adopt their amusements and try to hallow 
them? This will be, not to socialize our Chris- 
tianity, but to secularize it. It will be to make the 
* MUman, Lat. Chris, bk. iii. chap, vii., A. D. 590. 



SAINT PATRICK. 163 

"broad road" the easy avenue to the "strait gate;^' 
the rounds of mirth, the ladder of piety! The 
apology that such devices will draw some sinners 
who can be reached by nothing else is suspicious. 
It reflects on God^s own means. His gospel is 
adapted to reach every soul. To carry into the 
pulpit the buffooneries that make a street auction 
interesting to the crowd, all agape for low wit, 
finds a poor excuse in tlie assertion that some are 
thus won who can be gained in no other way. I 
deny the assertion. So long as men have a con- 
science and common sense, they can be touched by 
the solemn realities of eternity and the wondrous 
love of Christ. The efforts to tempt them into the 
way of life by worldly lures may afford them 
amusement, but the result will be only failure. 
Christ designed that his kingdom should be in the 
world (not of it), in order to Christianize the 
world. He did not mean that the world should 
be brought into his kingdom to secularize that 
kingdom. 

Centres of influence were sought. To gain a country 
he must win its petty king ; the prince first, then 
the peasantry. Secure the chief, the clan would 
follow. " To attempt the conversion of the clan 
in opposition to the will of the chieftain would 



164 SAINT PATRICK, 

probably have been to rush uj)on inevitable death, 
or at least to risk a violent expulsion from the 
district/^ We have seen that such leading men 
were the first converts. They permitted Patrick to 
extend his labours. " The clansmen pressed eagerly 
round the missionary who had baptized the chief, 
anxious to receive that mysterious initiation into 
the new faith to which their chieftain and 
father had submitted. The requirements prepara- 
tory to baptism do not seem to have been very rigor- 
ous; and it is therefore by no means improbable 
that in Tirawley and other remote districts, where 
the spirit of clanship was strong, Patrick, as he 
tells us himself he did, may have baptized some 
thousands of men.'^ * 

Thus every castle, every court, every city that 
gave him a footing became a centre of influence, a 
spring upon the mountain, sending its stream down 
upon the lowlands. There grew up the central 
churches, which at length swelled into cathedrals ; 
there were founded the schools, which a later age 
perverted into monasteries ; thence went forth mis- 
sionaries whose feet were " beautiful upon the 
mountains," for they were the messengers of '' good 
tidings f thither resorted young men afterward, 
^Todd's St. Patrick, pp. 498,499. 



SAINT PATRICK. 165 

and changed the old training-schools into rookeries 
of idle monks. 

The love of pioneering was strong in this earnest 
missionary. To go forth whither none had led the 
way was his delight. He planted where others 
should reap. Like Paul^ he chose not to build on 
another man's foundation. No doubt he sought 
out the scattered bands of believers whom Pal- 
ladius had failed to visit and strengthen. He 
may have made their cells the nurseries of schools 
and churches. In solitary places he may have 
found a few disciples, who had retreated into the 
forests to be safe from Druid foes and to hold 
fellowship with God. These he was able to lead 
out of their obscure retreats, place them as teachers 
over bands of youth, or as pastors over little flocks 
who needed a shepherd. 

On his first and perilous journey to the w^estern 
coast he came upon such a Christian retreat, if we 
may credit the better lines of an ancient story. 
There he met the " excellent presbyter Ailbe/^ who 
has often been represented as '' a bishop'' in Ireland 
before the days of Saint Patrick. The young man 
is more likely to have been a Culdee missionary. 
When he was about to be ordained by Patrick, he 
went to ^^ a cave" and dug from the earth certain glass 



168 SAINT PA TRICK. 

cups used in the communion service. They were 
hidden there from intruding robbers, who were very- 
plentiful in those parts. The cave seems to have 
been a rude chapel, fitted up in a concealed place, a 
long time before, by some of the early Christians 
of Ireland. It is pleasant to imagine that Ailbe 
chose the old retreat as the point for new labours, 
and won converts from the wild tribes of Sligo, 
thus building the old waste places and repairing 
the broken altars of Jehovah. 

His enthusiasm for souls was a motive-power 
within him. He laboured with the ardour and 
energy of faith, and produced effects upon rude 
minds which proved that God was with him. 
Plunging into deep forests as a bold pioneer, he 
opened the road to Christian civilization. His 
journeys, if described, would serve as a guide-book 
to a large part of ancient Ireland. He penetrated 
the interior. He went down among the Firbolgs 
of Connaught. He went from one province to 
another, from one prince to another, undismayed by 
dangers or difficulties. Like another Paul, he 
preached the Gospel with the Holy Ghost sent 
down from heaven ; and his labours were crowned 
with great success. Kings, princes and hostile 
clans beat their swords into ploughshares and their 



SA INT PA TRICK. 167 

spears into pruning-hooks ; and so abundant was 
he in labour that in a few years he carried the 
gospel from Antrim to Kerry, and from the 
Wicklow mountains to the mo«t secluded glens 
of Mayo.* 

His daring spirit urged him into perilous scenes. 
What were dangers to such a man ? He dared to 
obey the call of duty. It appears that on a day 
when he was at Tarah, he overheard two chieftains 
conversing together about their home and people. 
One of them said, ^^ I am Enna the son of Amal- 
gaid, from the western regions^ where is the Wood 
of Foclut." 

^' That seems to be the country of w^hich I had a 
dream in my youth, where the children called for 
me to come and help them," answered Patrick ; ^^ I 
will return with you to your home, if the Lord 
shall so direct." . 

'' Thou shalt not go forth with me, lest we be 
both slain. It is a long road and beset with 
enemies." 

'' Thou mayst never reach thine own country 
alive unless I go with thee, and, if thou dost not 
hear my gospel, thou shalt not have eternal life." 

^^ I wish my son to be taught, for he is of tender 
^Murray, Irelaud and tfce Irish. 



168 SAINT PATRICK, 

years/^ said the chief, bringing foward the lad, 
whom Patrick took by the hand, Avhile a blessing 
fell from the good man's lips. *^ Bat I and my 
brothers cannot believe until we come to our own 
people, lest they should mock us.'' 

It was agreed that Patrick should be well 
guarded upon the rough journey to the far west, 
*^ straight across all Ireland." The king sent out 
a body of men with him, but it appears that the 
missionary paid fifteen of them for their services. 
Among some of the wild tribes it seems that the 
company fell into savage hands, if Patrick wrote 
the following words : " On that day they most 
eagerly desired to kill me, but the time was not yet 
come ; yet they plundered everything they found 
Avith us, and bound me in irons ; but on the four- 
teenth day the Lord delivered me from their power, 
and whatever was ours was restored to us, through 
God and by the help of the close friends whom we 
had before provided." He seems to have bought 
his liberty quite often on such occasions, for he 
adds : '' You know how much I expended upon 
those who were judges throughout all the districts 
which I used to visit. And I think I paid tli^m 
the price of not less than fifteen men, that so you 
might enjoy me, and that I may always enjoy you 



SAINT PATRICK. 169 

in the Lord. I do not repent of it^ yea it is not 
enough for me. I still spend and will spend more. 
The Lord is mighty to give me more hereafter, 
that I may employ myself for your souls, (2 Cor. 
xii. 15).'' 

Crossing the river Moy, he came into a wooded 
country, like that of which he had dreamed many 
years before, and which had clung ever since to his 
imagination. But it quite staggers our faith to 
read the story of the legend -makers, that he met 
two young women who w^ere the very children 
once calling to him from the Focladian forests. 
We may follow him to the ral lying-place of the 
clan Amalgaid, not far from the present town of 
Killala. The clansmen had met to elect a leader 
from among the seven sons of their late chieftain. 
These sons were brave warriors, ^Svhose match in 
the field of battle it were diflScult to find." One 
of them was Enna, who had talked with the great 
missionary at Tarah. Politics ran high, and the 
candidates for office were not likely to make them- 
selves unpopular. If the people should hear the 
preacher with favour, the leaders w^ould gladly 
avow themselves believers. Patrick stood up be- 
fore the large assembly and declared the glad tid- 
ings. ^^ He penetrated the hearts of all," says 



170 SAINT PATRICK, 

Tirechan, ^^ and led them to embrace cordially tlie 
Christian faith and doctrine/^ At an ancient well 
it is said that large numbers were baptized^ and 
among them the sons of the late chief. Over the 
flock thus gathered was placed a pastor, ^' a man 
of great sanctity, well versed in Holy Scripture."* 

The endurances of such a missionary added to 
his success. Heroism captivates ; self-denial car- 
ries with it a high degree of reverence. The man 
who makes sacrifices for a people usually wins their 
hearts. Monks and Jesuits have ever understood 
this fact, and when their self-denial was not real, 
they assumed the guise of it. Their haggard faces, 
their bare and bleeding feet, won them respect. 
Inhere is no good proof that Patrick went about in 
the disguises of poverty and humility. He en- 
dured real trials ; he made real sacrifices ; he re- 
fused the offers of gifts and wealth. He was 
careful to avoid the semblance of seeking his own 
glory and profit. It is an Irish saying, that if he 
had accepted all that was offered to him in grati- 
tude, he would not have left as much as would 
have fed two horses to those who came after him. 

From a few lines of the hymn attributed to his 
disciple Fiacc, whom we saw rising up to honour 
* Todd's St, Patri€k, pp, 442-449, 



SAINT PA TRICK, 171 

him at Tarah, the reader may cull some lines of 
truth : 

Prudent was Patrick until death : 

Bold was lie in banishing error : 

Therefore his fame was extended 

Up to each tribe of the people. 

He hymns and revelations 

And the three fifties'^ sang daily. 

He preached, he prayed, he baptized, 

And from rendering praise never ceased. 

He felt not the cold of the season ; 

Tlie rains of the night fell upon him : 

To further the kingdom of heaven 

He preached through the day on the hills. 

Oft on the bare rock he rested ; 
A dampened cloak was his shelter: 
Then, leaving behind his stone pillow, 
He hastened to unceasing labours.f 

* Tres quinquagenas psahnorum is Colgan's version. This 
singing of '^ the three jfifties" sounds to us quite as much out of 
time as if it were said that he took his salary in five- twenties ! 

f Here we refer to a legend about which some of our reader^ 
will be curious to know. It gave rise to a proverb. It is, that 
when Patrick was in the west of Ireland, he passed his Lent on 
a high mountain, " fasting forty days without taking any kind 
of sustenance !" Very wonderful indeed! but Joceline burdens 
our amazement still more. This monk gravely tells us that 
" in this place he gathered together the several tribes of ser- 
pents and venomous creatures, and drove them headlong into 



172 SAIXT FA TRICK. 

When some of his ^^ children in the Lord/' wish- 
ing to show their gratitude, ^^ voluntarily brought 
him presents, and pious women gladly offered to 
him their ornaments, Patrick refused them all/' in 
order to avoid the charge that he sought to enrich 
himself. At first they were offended by his refusal. 
But they learned to honour him for his rule of not 
accepting presents for himself. He turned the tide 
of donations to the Lord. He built up these gifts 
in walls of schools and churches, or with them 
^^ redeemed many Christians from captivity.'' As a 
faithful shepherd he was ready to give up every- 
thing, even life itself, for the sheep. 

In his old age he could appeal to the people, re- 
ferring to these refusals of gifts: '^If I took any- 
thing from you, tell me, and I will restore it. 
Nay, I rather expended money for you, so far as I 
was able ; and I went among you, and everywhere, 
for your sakes, amid many dangers, even to those 
extreme regions whither no man had ever gone to 

tlie Western ocean, and hence hath proceeded tliat exemption 
which Ireland enjoys from all poisonous reptiles." He did it 
by beating a drum, and this is the only point reasonable in the 
story. If anything could frighten the " creeping things," a 
drum would be likely to do it. It must have been some other 
event that gave to a mountain in that region the name of 
Croagh-Patrick. 



SAINT PATRICK. 173 

baptize and confirm the people or ordain clergy; 
and by the help of the Lord I did all things dili- 
gently and most gladly for your salvation. At the 
same time I gave presents to kings, besides the 
cost of keeping their sons^ who walked with me in 
order that robbers might not seize me and my com- 
panions. ... I call God to witness that I sought 
not honour from you. That honour is enough for 
me, which is not seen, but is felt in the heart. 
[Compare PauFs ^testimony of a good conscience.'] 
God is faithful, who has promised, and who never 
lies. But I see myself already, in this world, ex- 
alted above measure by the Lord. I know very 
well that poverty and discomfort suit me mucli 
better than riches and a life of pleasure. Yes, in- 
deed; even the Lord Jesus became poor for our 
sakes. Daily I expected to be seized, dragged into 
slavery or slain. But I feared none of all these 
things, for I cast myself in the arms of Him who 
rules over all, as it written, 'Cast thy burden on 
the Lord, and he will sustain thee.' '' 

These are stirring words. They go ploughing 
through the idle soul, and soften it for fruitfulness. 
No leisurely bishop was Patrick. Not even could 
he take time to revisit his native land. ^'God 
knows how greatly I have wished it/' he is made 



174 SAINT PA TRICK. 

to say. ^^I would gladly have gone into Britain, 
as to my country and parents, and even into Gaul 
to visit my brethren, and to see the face of the 
saints of my Lord. But I am bound by the 
Spirit, who will pronounce me guilty if I do this, 
and I dread lest the work I have begun should 
fall to the ground.^^ There is no evidence that he 
ever left Ireland after he had fully entered upon 
his mission. 

The story that he went to Rome and came back 
an archbishop is a groundless fiction. If we be- 
lieve that he went, we may as well take the whole 
story, and believe that he got some relics for 
Armagh by rather sharp practice. ^^ While the 
keepers of the sacred place were asleep and uncon- 
scious,^^ he crept in and carried off a goodly quan- 
tity of old clothes, blood-stained towels, saints' 
tresses, and the like. "The pope'^ winked at the 
proceeding. "Oh wondrous deed I'^ exclaims the 
legend is t in rapture. " Oh rare theft of a vast 
treasure of holy things, committed without sacri- 
lege — the plunder of the most holy place in the 
world.'^ And yet this writer fails to tell that the 
pope embraced Patrick, declared him to be the 
Apostle of Ireland, and made him an archbishop. 
This invention was left for Joeeline. 



SAINT PATRICK, 175 

Attention to young men was a marked feature of 
the ministry of Patrick. He drew them after 
him, teaching them as they travelled, and calling 
out their gifts by employing them in the good 
work. Certain chieftains allowed their sons to at- 
tend him, often at his expense. The gentle lad 
Benignus, the charming singer, was long at his 
side. When he found men of the lower rank 
suited to a higher calling, he took care to have 
them instructed and fitted to become teachers of 
the people. Thus he was raising up a native 
ministry. 

The redefinjMon of captives was another feature 
of his wise policy. He had "a zeal to preserve 
the country where he himself had borne the yoke 
from the abuses of slavery, and especially from the 
incursions of the pirates — Britons and Scots, 
robbers and traffickers in men — who made it a sort 
of store from which they took their human cattle.^'* 
This gave him favour with the peasantry, who 
loved their children equally with the nobles in 
their forts and castles. Many of the rescued cap- 
tives seem to have been placed in schools and 
trained for the work of teaching and preaching. 
It was common at that time in Europe for the 

* Montalembert, Monks of the West, vol. ii, p, 392. 



176 SA INT PA TRICK. 

missionaries to purchase heathen slaves, educate 
them, and send them back to their native land to 
bear the tidings of salvation. Patrick was an ex- 
ample to himself of what a redeemed captive 
might accomplish. 

To do and suffer all in the name of the Lord ap- 
pears to have been Patrick's earnest desire. For 
him he could labour, suffer, die. He was willing 
to be counted as one of the '' least of all saints." He 
says, " Let none think that I place myself on a level 
with the apostles. I am a poor, sinful, despicable 
man. . . . Ye line talkers, who know nothing of 
the Lord, learn who it is that has called a simple 
person like myself from the ranks of the lowly to 
serve this people, to whom the love of Christ has 
led me. ... I have no power unless he gives it 
to me. He knows that I greatly desire that he 
w^ould give me the cup of suffering which he has 
given others to drink. I pray God that he would 
give me perseverance, and think me worthy to bear 
a faithful testimony until the time of my departure. 
If I have striven to do anything for the sake of 
my God whom I love, I beseech him to allow me 
to shed my blood for his name, with those of my 
new converts w^ho have been cast into prison, even 
should I obtain no burial, or should my body be 



SAINT PATRICK. 177 

torn in pieces by wild beasts. I firmly believe that 
if this should happen to me, I have gained my 
soul along with my body ; for beyond a doubt we 
shall rise again in tliat day with the splendour of 
the sun ; that is, with the glory of our Redeemer. 
. . . The sun which we see daily rises and sets ; 
but the sun Christ will never set, nor will those 
who do his will. They shall live, as Christ lives, 
for ever.^^ 

The poiver of prayer was held to be an essential 
means of success. Not only did Patrick entreat 
God with fervour, but he laboured to secure a pray- 
ing Church. In the old Culdee spirit he chose 
cells and secluded places for supplication. Thither 
he wished the people to resort. There they might 
renew their strength. Thence they might go into 
the great field, with the blessing of the Lord upon 
them and the Spirit burning in their hearts. It 
was hardly his design to found monasteries. "Saint 
Patrick had a much higher object in view. He 
seems to have been deeply imbued with faith in the 
intercessory powers of the Church. He established 
throughout the land temples and oratories [praying- 
places] for the perpetual worship of God. He 
founded societies of priests and bishops, whose first 
duty it was Ho make constant supplications, prayers, 

12 



178 SAINT PATRICK, 

intercessions, and giving thanks for all men/'^ 
He felt that without prayer his preaching would 
be in vain. From this source slowly arose an evil. 
These societies became convents in a later century. 
It would be too much, probably, to claim that 
Patrick was entirely free from the monastic tend- 
encies of that age, yet he was not a monk. His 
effort was not to found monasteries. 

The power of God was the great cause of success. 
To secure it, all else was done. It came by prayer, 
by. faithful preaching of the divine word, and by 
the agencies of active laymen and teachers. Men 
planted, God gave the harvest. 

Early in Ireland, Christianity took a somewhat 
national form. It was not looked upon as coming 
from foreigners, nor did it adopt a foreign character. 
It had peculiarities of its own. " The successors 
of Saint Patrick in his missionary labours were 
many of them descendants of the ancient kings and 
chieftains so venerated by a clannish people. The 
surrounding chieftains and men in authority, who 
still kept aloof in paganism, were softened by 
degrees when they perceived that in all the assem- 
blies of the Christian Church fervent prayers were 
offered to God for them. In this point of view 
the public incense of prayer and ^ lifting up of 



SAINT PATRICK. 179 

hands' of the Church in a heathen land is perhaps 
the most important engine of missionary success. 
^Is'othing/ says St. Chrysostom^ Ms so apt to draw 
men under teaching as to love and to be loved ;' to 
be prayed for in the spirit of love/^ * We do not 
need for thislpttrpo&a any other societies than the 
churches of the land ; no convents, no monasteries, 
but bands of Christians earnest in prayer, in their 
homes and in the house of God. 

PerseGutlon was the usual attendant of missionary 
effort in a heathen country. Christian civilization 
has generally followed in the footsteps of a bleed- 
ing Church. But the early Christians of Ireland 
were not exposed so much to the svv^ord, the rack 
and the flames. Still their peace has been exag- 
gerated. ^^ While, in otlier countries/^ says Mr. 
Moore, ^^ the introduction of Christianity has been 
the slow work of time, has been resisted by either 
government or people, and seldom effected without 
a lavish effusion of blood, in Ireland, on the con- 
trary, by the influence of one humble but zealous 
missionary, and with little previous preparation of 
the soil by other hands, Christianity burst forth at 
the first ray of apostolic light and with the sudden 
ripeness of a northern summer, and at once covered 
* Todd's St. Patrick, p. 514. 



180 SAINT PATRICK. 

the whole land. Kings and princes, when not 
themselves among the ranks of the converted, saw 
their sons and daughters joining in the train 
without a murmur. Chiefs, at variance in all else, 
agreed in meeting beneath the Christian banner ; 
and the proud Druid and bard laid their supersti- 
tions meekly at the foot of the Cross ; nor, by a 
singular disposition of Providence, unexampled 
indeed in the whole history of the Church, was 
there a single drop of blood shed, on account of 
relioi:ion, throuo:h the entire course of this mild 

CD 7 O 

Christian revolution, by which, in the space of a 
few years, all Ireland was brought tranquilly under 
the influence of the gospel.^^ ^ 

This pleasing picture is not true to fact. Not 
all Ireland was converted, even nominally. Very 
much was done, but not without the shedding of a 
drop of Christian blood. Patrick refers to his breth- 
ren who suffered and were slain for their faith. His 
own life was always in danger and often assailed. 
We have seen him going westward with an escort, 
and even then he did not escape injury. He had 
some of his schools and churches encircled by walls 
and fortifications for the protection of the inmates. 
The great churches stood as the castles of Christ. 
^Ilist. Ireland, i. p. 203. 



SAINT PATRICK, 181 

A touching story is told of Oran, his charioteer. 
Patrick had overturned the great black stone^ the 
idol of the Irish, and he was travelling into Lein- 
ster. For this deed a certain chief, named Berraid, 
sought revenge. He resolved to fall upon him if 
Patrick ever passed by his fortress. This resolu- 
tion came to the ear of Oran, who seems to have 
been in the habit of walking beside the gig, that 
may have had but one seat. When they came near 
the castle, Oran pretended to be very weary, and 
his master gave up the seat and took the road on 
foot. Soon the plotting chieftain hurled a javelin 
at the man who was riding past, taking him for the 
image-breaker. Oran fell mortally wounded, but 
in dying had the satisfaction of having saved the 
life of the master whom he loved by the sacrifice 
of his own. 

The Leinster men seem to have shown especial 
aversion to Patrick and his doctrines. They had 
driven away Palladius, and their sleeping wrath 
was easily aroused. It is told by the later writers 
that Patrick went into this province, hoping first 
to win Dunlaing the king, and then the people. 
He visited the royal castle of Naas. Two of the 
king^s sons accepted the gospel. This provoked 
the sullen and crafty Foillen, one of the royal offi- 



182 SAINT PATRICK, 

cers. He laid his plans to rid the court of the hated 
teacher of religion. On a day when he saw Pat- 
rick coming to talk with him he pretended to be 
asleep. The visitor entered the room^^ but detected 
the plot to take his life. The wicked man was dis- 
armed^ and probably was secretly thrown into a 
prison, where he soon died. This is more likely 
than that his feigned repose proved the sleep of 
death, as the legend-makers afRrm. But the idea 
went out among the people that on the approach of 
Patrick his eves were sealed for ever in death, and 
hence the proverb, used when a Leinster man 
wishes his worst to an enemy : " May his sleep be 
like that of Foillen in the castle of Naas.^' 



;^^^^^^^ 





CHAPTER XI. 

PATRICK'S CREED. 

HE articles of a great man's faith may in- 
terest us quite as much as the acts of his 
life. If his belief was sound, his example 
will have more force. Saint Patrick lived 
in an age when eminent men were expected to 
announce their creed. He wrote none. This may 
go to show that then Ireland was not troubled with 
the great questions w^hich agitated the Continent. 
On that isle, in the north-west of Christendom, no 
footing w'as given to the heresies of Pelagius, who 
denied man's native helplessness; and Arius, who 
denied the divinity of Christ. It may show that 
Patrick had no contact with the Roman world. 

But Patrick strongly expressed his doctrines. 
We may gather them from the writings which pass 
under his name. They crop out like the granite 
in a mountain land. AVhen he pleads or rebukes, 
or tells the simple story of his life, they gleam 
forth as gems washed up by the waves. In his 
warmest sentences he drives a nail that shines with 

183 



184 SAINT PATRICK. 

Scripture. And It Is worthy of notice that he does 
not quote the version of Jerome, which was largely- 
used in the Roman churches. He quotes the old 
Latin Vulgate,'^ such a translation as he would 
likely have found in a Culdee cell if he was there 
as a student in his earlier days. The Bible of a 
man^s youth is preferred in his old age. 

All that has come down to us from his pen, ex- 
cept the hymn, was written in the evening of his 
life. He could look back upon the great work 
done in a vast field. The glory of God was dear 
to his heart; to live for that was his motive. 
Tillemont says of the Confession : '' It was 
written to give glory to God for the great grace 
which the author had received, and to assure the 
people of his mission that it was indeed God him- 
self who had sent him to preach to them the gospel, 
to strengthen their faith, and to make known to all 
the world that the desire of preaching the gospel, 
and of having a part in its promises, was the sole 
motive which had induced him to go to Ireland. 
He had long intended to write, but had deferred 
doing so, fearing lest what he wrote should be ill- 
received among men because he had not learned 
to write well, and what he had learned of Latia 
^ Todd's St. Patrick, pp. 347-349. 



SAINT PATRICK. 185 

was still further corrupted by intermixture with 
the Irish language. , . . The work is full of good 
sense^ and even of intellect and fire^ and, what is 
better, it is full of piety. The saint exhibits 
throughout the greatest humility, without lowering 
the dignity of his ministry. We see in the tract 
much of the character of St. Paul. The author 
was undoubtedly well read in the Scriptures.^^ * 
He expected that it would be read by better 
scholars than himself; perhaps there were such in 
Ireland, even among the students whom he had 
trained. 

Patrick tells us : "I am greatly a debtor to God, 
who hath vouched me such great grace that many 
people by my means should be born again to God ; 
and that clergy should be ordained everywhere 
for the people who have lately come to the faith ; 
for the Lord hath taken them from the ends of the 
earth, as he has promised of old by his prophets : 
^The Gentiles shall come to thee from the ends of 
the earth, and shall say, Surely our fathers have 
inherited lies and vanity, and there is no profit in 
them.' And again : ^ I have given thee as a light 
to the Gentiles, that thou mayest be for salvation, 
even unto the end of the earth.' And there I 
* Tillemontj Mem. Eccl. S. Patrick, xvi; p. 461. 



186 SAINT PATRICK. 

desire to wait for the promise of him who never 
faileth ; as he promiseth in his gospel : ^ They shall 
come from the east, and from the west, and shall 
sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and tlacob ;' 
as we believe that believers shall come from the 
whole world.'' 

The results of his work appeared astonishing as 
he reviewed it : " Whence comes it that in Hlberio"^ 
those who never had any knowledge of God, and 
up to the present time worshipped only idols and 
abominations, are lately become the people of the 
Lord, and are called the sons of God ? The sons 
of Scotsf and daughters of Christians appear now 
as monks and virgins of Christ — even one blessed 
Scottish lady, of noble birth and of great beauty, 
who was adult, and whom I baptized.'^ Who this 
lady was we know not, but we are told that, of her 
own accord, she devoted herself to a more secluded 
life in order to "live nearer to God/' Others did 
the same, even at the cost of enduring persecution 
from their nearest relatives. 

His thoughts took somev/hat the form of a 
creed when writing of the great benefits that God 

■^" His name for Ireland. 

f The jSTorthern Irish were called Scots. The references to 
monks will be explained hereafter. 



SAINT PATRICK. 187 

gave him in the land of his captivity. He says: 
^' After we have been converted and brought to God 
we should exalt and confess his wondrous works 
before every nation under the whole heaven, that 
there is none other God, nor ever was, nor shall be 
hereafter, than God the Father unbegotten, without 
beginning, from whom is all beginning, upholding 
all things. 

^^ And his Son Jesus Christ, whom we acknow- 
ledge to have been always with the Father before 
the beginning of the world, spiritually w^ith the 
Father, in an ineffable manner begotten, before all 
beginning; and by him were all things made, 
visible and invisible. 

^^ And being made man, and having overcome 
death, he was received into heaven unto the 
Father ; and [the Father] hath given unto him all 
power, above every name, of things in heaven and 
things in earth, and things under the earth, that 
every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is 
Lord and God ; 

^^Whom we believe and looh for his coming ; 
who is soon about to be the Judge of quick and 
dead; who will render unto every man according 
to his work ; 

" And who hath poured into us abundantly the 



188 SAINT PATRICK, 

gift of the Holy Ghost, and the pledge of immor- 
tality; who maketh the faithful and obedient to 
become the sons of God the Father^ and joint heirs 
with Christ ; 

" Whom we confess and worship, one God in the 
Trinity, of the Sacred NameJ^ 

Such is the brief summary of doctrines in the 
Confession. It was not intended to be a full creed. 
We shall find in the Epistle to Coroticus a hearty 
expression of other doctrines, so uttered that they 
might burn upon the consciences of bad men or be 
a comfort to certain disciples in captivity. 

It appears that one evening there was a multi- 
tude witnessing a baptism. A goodly number of 
converts, clad in white robes, Avere at the fountain. 
The minister, who seems not to have been Patrick, 
w^as baptizing them. Very soon after a band of 
pirates rushed upon them. Some were slain while 
the drops of water were scarcely dried from their 
foreheads. Others were carried away in their white 
robes. The people were affrighted and ran for 
their lives. Houses were plundered and almost 
every sort of outrage committed. The captives 
were taken to the sea-shore, put into boats, borne 
away to a foreign land and sold into slavery. The 
man who did this act of villainy, or in whose name 



SA IN T PA TR ICK. 189 

it was done, was Corotlcus. He seems to have 
been a petty prince of Wales, perhaps Caradoc, 
from whom the county of Cardigan is said to 
derive its name. Some of the Scots and Picts 
seem to have aided in the nefarious business. 

The heart of Patrick was touched with pity 
for the captives, and filled with indignation against 
the marauders. He wrote a protest against the 
merciless deed. He chose w^ise and earnest men 
and sent them to the cruel prince. One of them 
he calls'^ a venerable presbyter, whom I taught 
from infancy .^^ He must have been worthy of the 
delicate mission. Perhaps he was Benignus. Taking 
their boat, these men went to Coroticus, who pro- 
fessed to be a Christian ! They presented the letter 
of the man who styled himself ^^ Bishop in Ireland.'' 

^' What right has he to reprove me ?'' we hear 
the prince say haughtily. " He is not my bishop.'' 

^' But have mercy on the poor people," is the en- 
treaty of the venerable presbyter. ^^ Be so good as 
to restore some of the plunder and set free the 
baptized captives." 

" Away with you !" we seem to hear the lawless 
chieftain reply. ^^They were all taken by the 
rights of war. It is too late to plead for them ; 
they have been sold, and I have the money for 



190 SAINT PATRICK. 

them. Get you gone ! You Irish are fit only to 
be slaves. In five minutes 1^11 put chains about 
your necks, offer you in the market and find what 
you are worth." 

^^ God will bring you into judgment — " 

" Away, away ! Officers, take these insolent 
Irishmen out of my presence." 

In some such manner the embassy was dismissed 
w^ith scoffs and ridicule. Contempt was thrown 
upon the letter of Patrick, which has not been pre- 
served. The wise men had to return, carrying only 
disappointment to many parents and relatives, who 
had hoped to see ih^ boats returning loaded with 
their goods, their children and their friends. 

Again Patrick took his pen. He wrote another 
protest. He sent it out into the world, hoping that 
it w^ould drop down like a shaft of lightning upon 
Coroticus, and drift as an olive branch to the 
captives. He says : " It is the custom of the 
Roman and Gallican Christians to raise large sums 
of money for the redemption of baptized captives 
from the Franks and other pagans. But you, a 
professing Christian, slay the disciples of Christ 
or you sell them to heathen nations. You hand 
over the members of Christ to the abominations of 
the heathen." 



SA INT PA TRICK. 191 

Then addressing the hirelings of the chieftain, 
he says : '' Patrick, an ignorant sinner, and yet 
appointed a bishop in Hibernia, and dwelling 
among the barbarous tribes because of my love 
to God, I write these letters with my own hand to 
be borne to the soldiers of the tyrant : I say not to 
my fellow-citizens, nor to the fellow- citizens of the 
Roman saints, but to the co-workers of the devil, 
as their evil deeds prove. For they live in death ; 
they are the associates of the apostate Scots and 
Picts ; they fatten on the blood of innocent Chris- 
tians, multitudes of whom I have begotten and 
confirmed in Christ. . . . Does not the divine 
mercy which I cherish oblige me to defend even 
those who once made me a captive, and put to the 
massacre the servants of my father? For this peo- 
ple are confessing their sins and turning to the 
Lord. Let your sonls melt when I praise the 
courage of the girls whom you insulted and stole 
away. Those delicate children of mine in the faith, 
]how they defended themselves from outrage! 
AVhat heroic courage against their unworthy 
masters ! 

" The Church weeps and wails over her sons and 
over her daughters, whom the sword has not yet 
slain, but who are exiled in far-off lands where sin 



192 SA INT PA TRICK, 

openly and shamelessly abounds. There Christian 
freemen are reduced to slavery, and that by the 
most unworthy, most infamous and apostate Picts. 
O most beauteous and beloved children ! I can but 
cry out to you; I cannot tell what to do with 
you ; I am not worthy to give help. The wicked- 
ness of the wicked hath prevailed over ns. We 
are become as aliens. Do they believe that you 
and us have received one baptism, that we have 
one God, our Father ? Perhaps not ; with them it 
is a crime that we [ye] are born in Hibernia. . .* 
" Have ye not one God ? Why then wrong one 
another? I grieve for myself. But yet I rejoice 
that I have not laboured in vain ; not in vain hath 
been my pilgrimage here ; only there hath come to 
pass this outrage so horrible and unspeakable. 

^' Thanks be to God, O ye believers and baptized 
[ye who have been slain] ! ye have gone from this 
world to Paradise. I behold you. You have be- 
gun to journey whither there shall be no night, nor 
sorrow nor death: ye shall exult as lambs let loose: 
■^ "If Coroticus had at that time succeeded in banishing the 
Gwyddil, or Irish settlers in South Wales, and in the frenzy of 
victory had pursued them to Ireland, it is not unnatural that 
his followers should regard every native of Ireland as an enemy, 
and treat him as such." In his sympathy Patrick identifies 
himself with the captives. — Todd^St. Patrick, 360. 



SAINT PA TRICK, 19 



o 



ye shall trample upon the ungodly; they shall be 
as ashes under your feet. Ye shall reign with 
apostles and prophets and martyrs. Ye shall re- 
ceive everlasting kingdoms. . . . Without are dogs 
and sorcerers and murderers and liars, whose por- 
tion is the lake of eternal fire. . . . 

^^Thus shall sinners and the ungodly perish from 
the face of the Lord ; but the righteous^ in great 
joy, shall feast with Christy shall judge the hea- 
tlien, and shall rule over ungodly kings for ever 
and ever, ... 

'^ I testify before God and his holy angels, that 
it shall be so as my ignorance* has said. These 
are not my words ; they are the words of God, of 
his apostles and prophets, who never lie. I have 
translated them into Latin. f They who believe 
shall be saved, but whoso believeth not shall be 
damned. God hath spoken. I therefore earnestly 
request of every one who may become the bearer 
of this letter, that it be withheld from none, but 
let it be read before all the people, and in the pres- 

* 3Iea imperita, that is, "I m3^self." It was the frequent 
mode of speaking with this humble man. He is concluding 
the epistle. 

f Had he consulted the original tongues, so as to be sure of 

the meaning, and then made a new translation ? 
13 



194 SAINT PATRICK. 

ence of Coroticus himself. May God inspire them 
to return to a better mind toward him^ so that even, 
though late, they may repent of their impious 
deeds. They have been the murderers of the 
brethren of the Lord. But let them repent and set 
free the baptized captive women. Tims shall God 
count them worthy of life, and they shall be made 
whole here and for ever. Peace"^^ to the Father, to 
the Son and to the Holy Ghost. Amen.^^ 

Thus closes the stirring letter; now revealing 
flashes of lightning, and again the gentle sunbeams 
of love. Its eifect we know not. The proud 
chieftain was worthy of only the silence of history. 
No return is mentioned of a single captive. Bond- 
aire was to them a severe school, but it was the 
school of God. It may have been blessed to them as 
it had once been to the great and good man who had 
brought the gospel to their native land. It may 
have waked them to a higher life. Perhaps their 
baptism had been little more than outward and 
nominal — a thing too common throughout Christen- 

^' Perhaps he meant "glory/^ or he may have meant it as 
a prayer that Coroticus might repent and find peace with God. 
No revenge burns in the noble epistle: with all his tremendous 
voice of justice Patrick breathed the invitations of mercy. 
Here was love to an enemy. 



SAINT PATRICK, 195 

dom in that age. It had ushered them into the 
Church ; but now they may feel the need of ^' the 
washing of regeneration;'^ now they may seek 
union with Christ. Perhaps many of them were a 
blessing to others. Some little maiden may have 
proved as an angel unawares in the house of a 
Pictish Naaman. Some youth may have thought 
how Ireland once had a slave who had become her 
spiritual deliverer ; and why might not the captive 
among a barbarous people serve the Lord so well 
that his master should ask the way of happiness 
and life ? Bondsmen have been employed by the 
Redeemer to set nations free. 





CHAPTER XII. 

THE CHURCH OF SAINT PATRICK. 

HAT was the Church built up by Saint 
Patrick? its form, its offices, its term of 
existence? To this inquiry we set our- 
selves in the interest of historic truth, and 
not in that of any party. Christ was more to him 
than the Church ; of the one we know what he 
believed — of the other it is hard to learn what he 
thought. He was not the high churchman of any 
denomination. 

The late Dr. Murray well said: "There has 
been much learned and rather sharp controversy 
as to the polity or external form of the Church in 
the days of Patrick. The Prelatists claim him as 
archbishop, as having received orders in a direct 
line from the apostles, and as thus transmitting 
orders to them. To believe this leads necessarily 
to the belief of the monkish fables in reference to 
him. This claim it is impossible to establish, 
whether it be true or false in itself. Some Inde- 
pendents would claim him as a noble Congrega- 

196 



SA IN T PA TR ICK. 197 

tionalist; among whom, we believe, stands the 
eloquent and warm-hearted Mr. King, of Dublin; 
whilst others, of the Belfast school, would claim 
him as a Presbyterian. That he was not a Papist 
is certain; but what he was in polity is very un- 
certain. It is most likely he troubled himself far 
less upon that subject than do many in our day, 
esteeming it his great work to preach the gospel • 
But \vhen we read that ' Ireland was full of village 
bishops' — that in one county, Meath, there were 
nearly thirty bishops — that at one period there 
were about three hundred bishops in the kingdom, 
Ave may reasonably conclude that parochial bishops 
were the only ones known to the primitive Chris- 
tianity of Ireland, and that every parish was a 
bishopric. But there is darkness sufficient resting 
upon the annals of those early times to forbid 
dogmatism on the one hand, and there are now 
and then the gleaming out of great principles suffi- 
cient to form the basis of theories on the other.''* 

We have seen young men following Patrick as 
students and helpers. Thus they w^ere trained for 
missionary work. It was not necessary to send 
them far away to the Continent to be educated, 
where the system of schools was becoming mo- 
^ Ireland and the Irish. 



198 SAINT PATRICK, 

nastic. There were places for retired study at 
home. The old Culdee system had its cells, which 
grew into colleges. There is reason to think that 
Patrick found this system in Ireland and adopted 
its main features. The cell, or hil, seems to have 
been at first a refuge from danger and a resort for 
prayer; then a fixed abode for studious men. It 
grew into a church or a college ; often it became a 
religious centre, whither the people flocked for 
worship, teaching and consolation. In the course 
of years a town grew up around many a prominent 
cell. We find very many names as memorials of 
the ancient kil ; such as Kildare, the church or 
cell of the oak; Kill-fine, the church of the tribe; 
Cill-Chiarain, the cell of Ciaran, or Kieran. 

The story of Ciaran is that he went into a dense 
wood of Munster, made him a cell, played with 
the wild animals around him, studied and lived 
near to God. He drew to him young men of 
serious minds and taught them; the school en- 
larged into a monastery ; a city arose on the spot. 
It is not certain when he lived. Some make him a 
bishop in Ireland thirty years before Saint Patrick ; 
others, a child to whom the great missionary gave 
his blessing on one of his journeys; and others 
place him in the sixth century. 



SAINT PATRICK. 199 

Here is probably a specimen of the schools in 
the days of Samt Patrick. The students were 
called monks because thev led a secluded life. 
But a young monk of the fifth century was a very 
different man from an old monk of the twelfth 
century. He was usually a young man preparing 
to become a missionary. His head was shorn, 
and he wore a dress peculiar to his class. If he 
grew too fond of a secluded life, he remained at 
the cell for long years^ or he went forth into the 
forests to found one for himself. This often oc- 
curred in later times. But we do not think Saint 
Patrick allowed such men to take their rest. 
They must prepare for work in the world, and 
when prepared go forth into the great field to sow 
and reap for the Master. 

It appears that Patrick often visited these 
schools, which ought not be called monasteries. 

The regulations were very different from monas- 
tic rules. They were little else than would now 
be demanded in a college where the inmates were 
required to support themselves. ^' Although they 
observed a certain institute/' says Jamieson, ^'yet, 
in the accounts given of them, we cannot overlook 
this remarkable distinction between them and 
those societies which are properly monastic, that 



200 SAINT PATRICK, 

they were not associated for the purpose of observ- 
ing this rule. They might deem certain regula- 
tions necessary for the preservation of order, but 
their great design was, by communicating instruc- 
tion, to train up others for the work of tlie minis- 
try. Hence it has been justly observed that they 
may be more properly viewed as colleges, in which 
various branches of useful learning were taught, 
than as monasteries. These societies, therefore, 
were in fact the seminaries of the Church both in 
North Britain and in Ireland.''* 

When Patrick found in these schools men 
qualified for the Avork, he was ready to say, ^^ The 
Lord hath need of thee." He had the care of 
churches that needed pastors. He ordained them 
as bishops. Thus he laid his hands on the gentle 
Benignus and placed him over the church of 
Armagh. There the good pastor fed the flock for 
many years. He travelled widely, and gave 
^^ splendid proofs of his zeal for religion and his 
anxious desire for the conversion of his country- 
men.'' But he went to his rest a few years before 
the great man who had led him forth from his 
father's house when a youth. There is nothing 
but manufactured evidence to show that he ever 
* Jamieson, Hist. Culdees, p. 33. 



SAINT PATRICK, 201 

had charge of more than one church, or that he 
had a diocese and an array of clergy under him. 

Thus, too, Patrick, when travelling along the 
banks of the Liffey, came upon Fiacc, whom he 
had once met as a young bard at the court of Tarah. 
The poet had been studying for the ministry. He 
was ordained a bishop and placed over the church 
of Sletty. At a later day imagination set him over 
all Leinster. He, no doubt, had a general interest 
in the little bands of Christians in that region, and 
made many a missionary tour, as many a zealous 
pastor now does in a new country. But this does 
not prove that he had a diocese. He seems to 
have been a good husband, a kind father, a learned 
man and the teacher of many disciples. It does 
not appear that he persuaded his former tutor, 
Dubtach, the converted bard, to preach the gospel. 
But this eminent man breathed into Celtic poetry 
the name of Christ. Druid songs were changed to 
Christian hymns. The pagan lyre bec^ame a solemn 
psaltery, giving its notes to holy psalms. An old 
author says that when once blessed and transformed, 
the songs of the bards became so sweet that the 
angels of God leaned down from heaven to listen ; 
and this is why the harp of the bards has continued 
to be the symbol and emblazonry of Ireland. 



202 SAINT PATRICK. 

When we go back as nearly as history will carry 
us to the days of Saint Patrick, we find that the 
weight of evidence justifies the following con- 
clusions : 

1. Men were ordained bishops per saltum^ that 
is, without passing through other clerical orders. 
They had not first to be deacons and priests.* A 
young man might be ordained a bishop, just as 
now a student is ordained a presbyter, thus given 
the highest office known to Presbyterianism. 

2. Men were thus ordained by a single bishop. 
It seems that Patrick often used this power alone. 
It began as a necessity, perhaps, when he was the 
only bishop in Ireland, and was continued after his 
example. But this may not have been the only 
rule of ordination. Even if it were, it would not 
be against one form of church government . more 
than another, for in no Church is it allowable for 
one bishop to ordain another, whatever may be 
understood by that title of office. 

3. Men were ordained bishops without being 
placed over any particular church. They had not 
the oversight of churches or clergy. They were 
evangelists, missionaries, travelling preachers and 

* Todd's St. Patrick, cli. i. ; which may be consulted on most 
of the folloving points. 



SAINT PA TR I CK. 203 

superintendents of schools. It is admitted by 
Prelatists that they were ^' bishops without sees or 
dioceses — wandering bishops/^ This class became 
very numerous in Ireland. 

Early in the twelfth century, Anselm of England 
complained thus of the state of affairs in Ireland : 
" It is said that bishops in your country are elected 
at random, and appointed without any fixed place 
of episcopal jurisdiction ; and that a bishop, like a 
priest, is ordained by a single bishop.^^ Such had 
been the state of things since the time of Patrick, 
who was eager to have a strong force of mission- 
aries in the field ; and he thought it important for 
them to hold the highest office and be the equal 
of himself. It cannot be showm that he was ever 
anything but a ^' bishop in Ireland,^^ as he styled 
himself in his last days. 

4. A single church had its bishop ; probably 
every church had one of its own. St. Bernard in 
the twelfth century thought this one sign of ^^a 
making void of religion,^^ that ^^ every particular 
church should have its particular bishop.'^ But 
Patrick held a different view. His rule seems to 
have been to place over every church a pastor, who 
w^as in office equal to himself. Hence Nennius 
says that he founded three hundred and sixty-five 



204 S A IN T P A TR ICK. 

churches^ and placed over them three hundred and 
sixty-five bishops. 

5. The bishops outnumbered the churches. '^It 
isj therefore, an undoubted fact/^ says Dr. Todd, 
'' that the number of bishops in Ireland Avas very 
great in early times, in proportion to the popula- 
tion, as well as absolutely ; although we are not 
bound to believe that Saint Patrick consecrated 
^ with his own hand^ three hundred and fifty 
bishops, founded seven hundred churches and 
ordained three thousand priests.^^ 

Nor are we bound to believe that there were so 
many places as are reported where seven bishops 
dwelt together as a brotherhood. Probably there 
were a few such in a later century, but hardly one 
hundred and forty-one of them! Nine hundred 
and eighty-seven bishops thus taking their ease ! 
The monkish annalists were death upon prelatic 
theories. 

'' There is abundant evidence," says Dr. Todd, 
^' to show that two or more contemporary bishops 
frequently lived together during the early period 
[of the Irish Church], in the same town, church or 
monastery." But this was doubtless some centuries 
after Patrick's death, when the monastic system 
was in full vigour. In his day the settled and 



SAINT PATRICK-. 205 

travelling bishops seemed to have been greater in 
number than the churches. Of the latter it is not 
possible to make any estimate. 

6. The bishop had no diocese. He was a pastor or 
missionary. In the afternoon of the sixth century 
it was enough for Columba to be ordained a bishop 
in order to qualify him for the great w^ork before 
him in Scotland. Nor was any higher office ever 
conferred upon him. So Columban^ who went into 
Europe^ is called by the same author a presbyter, 
and in another sentence a bishop, as if they were 
the very same office. The bishops who are repre- 
sented to have been placed over dioceses by Pat- 
rick belong to a later day. Even the four whom 
some have thought preceded him, and others to 
have laboured with him, seem to belong to the 
sixth or seventh century. They were Ciaran, Ailbe, 
Ibar and Declan. Perhaps the first two were co- 
W'Orkers of Patrick. Montalembert admits that 
^^ the constitution of dioceses and parishes, in Ire- 
land as in Scotland, does not go farther back than ^ 
to the twelfth century.'' 

7. Patrick was a " bishop in Ireland,^' and not the 
primate over it. He had upon him, in a very im- 
portant sense, ^^ the care of all the churches,'^ quite 
as Calvin had a general superintendence of all the 



206 SA INT FA TRICK. 

Protestant churches of France. But was Calvin 
an archbishop? He was a presbyter, the equal 
only in office of his brethren. 

It was very easy for writers, centuries after Pat- 
rick's time, to represent the great central churches 
as diocesan, the prominent pastors as prelatic 
bishops, the schools as monasteries, female teachers 
as the founders of nunneries, and over them all one 
great chief, one archbishop. Saint Patrick. But of 
all this Ave do not believe a word. The old Irish 
term ard-epscop only meant an eminent or cele- 
brated bishop, as ard-file meant a chief poet, or 
ard-righy an eminent king. It did not signify an 
archbishop In the modern sense.''' It might have 
been applied to any well-known and Influential 
pastor. 

We may well believe that several synods were 
held by Patrick and his co-presbyters. But It Is 
very doubtful whether he published any " canons'^ 
over his name ; certainly not the collections as they 
now appear. If he wrote any laws for the Church, 
the Romanists of a later age foisted In certain rules 
to serve their purpose. Thackeray says of the 
canons of the first synod, held about the year 460, 
"Although some marks of superstition may be 
^ Todd's St. Patrick, p. 10. 



SAINT PA TRICK. 207 

traced in them, and some leaning to the Church of 
Rome, we cannot helj) being struck by the sim- 
plicity, force and sense which pervade them."* 
The striking parts may have come from Patrick, 
the rest from those who meddled with all that he 
left behind him. 

It is in connection with some of these supposed 
synods that we hear of Auxilius and Iserninus. 
The story is, that they came as bishops to assist 
Patrick. Who sent them is not told in the Ulster 
Annals. The later account is that they went from 
Rome with him to Ireland. If their Roman mis- 
sion has no better foundation than his, we may give 
little credit to their existence, and yet not be guilty 
of taking their lives. 

Patrick must have had a very great influence over 
the Irish Church. He had a splendid gift of man- 
agement. He was able to keep all the forces at 
work. AVhatever his official power, there is no 
proof that he gave any account of his use of it to 
the court of Rome. '' He did not apply to the 
papal see to have the election of the bishops ap- 
pointed by him confirmed ; nor is there extant any 
rescript from the ' apostolic' see to him, or any epis- 
tle to Rome. . . . We have no record or hint of 
■^ Anc. Brit, ii, p. 1G7, 



208 SAINT PATRICK. 

his having kept up any communication with 
Rome." We are quoting a writer, who thinks that 
the existence of so many missionary and pastor- 
bishops in the early Irish Church was an error, yet 
he says, "It was an error into which a very 
zealous man, who thought he could not have enough 
of chief pastors and shepherds of Christ's flock 
was likely to fall ; but it was one that could not 
for a moment have been tolerated by Rome. Had 
she known it [or had any right to rule], she would 
doubtless have immediately put a stop to such an 
irregularity. The obvious inference is, that she 
was not made acquainted with the state of the in- 
fant Church in Ireland, and therefore that St. Pat- 
rick acted independently of the papal authority.''* 
In order to explain this it has been assumed that 
he had no need to give an account of himself, for 
"he w^as made apostolic legate over Ireland.'' But 
St. Bernard informs us that " Gillebert, bishop of 
Limerick, in the tAvelfth century, was the first wdio 
discharged the duties of apostolic legate in Ire- 

^ Eev. W. G. Todd, Church of St. Patrick, pp. 29-36. Mr. 
Todd has fully examined the subject, and he also says; " I have 
not been able to discover any fair instance of a bishop be- 
ing elected to an Irish see by the interference of tlie pope, 
from the mission of St. Patrick until after the English inva- 
sion." See also Lanigan, ii. 170, 



SA INT PA TRICK. 209 

land." Thus falls to the ground tlie claim that 
Patrick acted in the name or interest of Rome. 

There is some reason to think that the Church 
of Saint Patrick was more nearly presbyterial than 
congregational or prelatic. It was certainly not 
papal. It gradually adopted many errors, but it 
did not submit to the Pope of Home until the 
twelfth century. 

It grew,, extended and became a vast power in 
the world. Its schools became justly renowned. 
They attracted students from distant realms. The 
pupils of a single school were often numbered by 
thousands. The course of instruction embraced 
all the sciences then taught, but more especially 
the study of the Holy Scriptures. 

Thus the work of church extension, commenced 
on a large scale by Patrick, was carried on by faith- 
ful followers, until, before the beginning of the 
ninth century, the whole land had been studded 
with churches, colleges and scriptural schools, and 
Irish Christians were famous over Europe for 
learning, piety and missionary zeal. The Irish, 
who still wxre known by the name of Scots, were 
the only divines w^ho refused to dishonour their 
reason by submitting it implicitly to the dictates 
of authority. Naturally subtle and sagacious, they 

14 



210 SAINT PATRICK. 

applied their philosophy, such as it was, to the 
illustration of the truths and doctrines of religion 
— a method which was almost generally abhorred 
and exploded in all the nations. They were lovers 
of learning, and distinguished themselves, in these 
times of ignorance, by the culture of the sciences, 
beyond all other European nations. Owing to the 
eminence of the Irish in science and literature, and 
to the steadfastness with which they held fast the 
profession of their faith without wavering, Ireland 
was regarded at this period, throughout Europe, 
as the school of the West and an isle of saints.* 

Camden says : " The Saxons of that age flocked 
thither, as to the great mart of learning, and this 
is the reason why we find this saying so often in 
our [English] writers, ^Such an one was sent over 
into Ireland to be educated.^f No wonder that 
Aldhelm, abbot of Malmesbury, exclaimed, in a 
letter to Ealfrid, who had spent six years studying 
in Ireland, ^ Why should Ireland, whither students 
are transported in troops by fleets, be exalted with 
such unspeakable advantages f ^^ 

The rapid extension and singular prosperity of 
the early Irish Church is to be attributed, in no 

■^ Mosheim, Eccl. Hist. Cent. ix. ; Usslier, chap. vi. 
f Britannia, Art. Ireland. 



SAINT PATRICK. 211 

small degree, to its freedom from foreign control, 
and to the excellence of its system of church 
government. ^'Bishops were appointed without 
consulting Rome. They consecrated bishops for 
foreign missions; and these missions, in many in- 
stances, opposed the mandates of Rome. For 
more than five centuries after the death of St. 
Patrick we scarcely have any vestiges of a connec- 
tion between Rome and Ireland. Councils and 
synods were held from time to time, in order to 
bring the Church of Ireland to the same subordi- 
nation to Rome as those of every other part of 
Europe."* It is thus evident that in things 
spiritual and ecclesiastical they refused obedience 
alike to pope and king, holding that the Lord 
Jesus Christ is sole King and head of His Church. 
It would require a volume to do justice to the 
foreign missions of the Church of Saint Patrick. 
We should have to follow Columba, as he revived 
the system of the Culdees in Scotland, and made 
lona a great northern light casting its rays over all 

^ O'Halloran. Rev. W. G. Todd, a prelatist, in his Church 
of St. Patrick^ furnishes satisfactory evidence that the bishop 
of Rome did not appoint, elect, consecrate, nor confirm the 
bishops of Ireland, from the fifth to the twelfth century ; nor 
did he sanction the nii>^sions of the Irish Church, of which 
that of Columba was the first, to another country. 



212 SA INT PA TB ICK. 

Europe. We should have to trace Columban and 
Gallus marching, with weary feet, through Gaul, 
up the Ehine, over the Alps or into Italy, found- 
ing monasteries, rearing churches, enduring storm 
and cold, persecuted by kings and lifting neglected 
tribes out of barbarism. We should find Vir- 
gilius at Salzburg, in. the far-off wilds of the 
Tyrol, not only teaching the gospel, but also 
watching the motions of the planets and conclud- 
ing that the earth was round, and that on the 
other side, beneath his feet, there might be nations 
of men. His doctrine of the antipodes brought 
him into trouble with the pope. We have scarcely 
begun the list. In the year 565 the first mission- 
ary left the shores of Ireland. For nearly three 
centuries companies of learned and pious men, 
from the colleges of Ireland, continued to go forth 
to preach Christ in the neighbouring countries. 
In North and South Britain, and over all the 
Continent, they went everywhere preaching the 
gospel. Rejecting purgatory, the worship of 
images, the intercession of saints, and transub- 
stantiation — doctrines unknown in the Church of 
St. Patrick, and only recently introduced into the 
Church of Rome— they were always opposed by 
the Roman Catholic clergy, and often suffered per- 



SAINT PA TRICK. 213 

seciition ; still they held fast the truth, and con- 
tinued, till 840, to preach to the inhabitants of 
Continental Europe the very same Gospel preached 
by St. Patrick to the wondering natives of Ireland.* 

Concerning the theology of this period Neander 
writes : '^ In the Irish Church, from the time of 
its origin, a bolder spirit of inquiry had been pro- 
pagated, which caused many a reaction against the 
papacy; and as in the Irish monasteries, not only 
the Latin, but also the Greek fathers had been 
studied, so it naturally came about that from that 
school issued a more original and free development 
of theology than Avas to be elsewhere found, and 
was thence propagated to other lands." 

In the year 807 the Danes invaded Ireland. 
They were a fierce and warlike people, and treated 
the vanquished with horrid cruelty. Themselves 
worshippers of heathen gods, they considered it a 
religious duty to exterminate the Christians. For 
two hundred years the Irish were engaged in 
deadly conflict with these savage hordes. In the 
beginning of the eleventh century the storm sub- 
sided. There was a temporary calm. But already 
two centuries of civil war had produced their 
melancholy results. The great schools and colleges 
.•^ Wilson, Church of St. Patrick, p. 59. 



214 SAINT PATRICK, 

had been plundered^ burned, and their inmates 
slaughtered or dispersed. The churches were in 
ruins and the flocks scattered. The national re- 
cords and many ancient documents deposited in 
the monasteries had perished in the flames ; the 
bonds of society were loosened and social anarchy 
prevailed. Though learning and religion speedily 
revived, and schools and churches began to rise 
from their ashes, yet, owing to disunion and many 
irregularities, the Irish were less able than before 
to resist the insidious inroads of papal influence. 

The Romish bishops of the Danes in Ireland 
used all their influence to induce the native Irish 
to adopt Roman Catholic doctrines and modes of 
worship, and to acknowledge the authority of the 
Roman pontifi*. When it is remembered how com- 
pletely the early Irish Church had been disorgan- 
ized by two centuries of civil war, it will not seem 
strange that many of its members proved unfaith- 
ful to the old religion of their fathers, and accepted 
the new doctrines of Rome, lately brought into 
Ireland by these foreign bishops. Thus the Irish 
Church fell away from her ancient faith, and before 
a century had elapsed measures were taken to de- 
prive her of her ancient independence.* 
^- Church of St. Patrick, pp. 60-67. 



I 



SAIXT PATRICK, 215 

The English invaded and took possession of 
Ireland in the year 1172. No sooner had the 
poj^e heard of the success of the English expedi- 
tion than he wrote to King Henry a letter of con- 
gratulation. '^It is not (he wrote) without very 
lively sensations of satisfaction that we have 
learned of the expedition you have made in the 
true spirit of a pious king against the nation of 
the Trishj and of the magnificent and astonishing 
triumph over a realm into which the princes of 
Rome never pushed their army. Having a con- 
fident hope in the fervour of your devotion, we 
believe it would be your desire, not only to con- 
serve but to extend the privileges of the Church of 
Horaey and, as in duty bound, to establish her juris- 
diction where she has none at present; we, therefore, 
earnestly exhort your Highness to preserve to us 
the privileges belonging to St. Peter in that land.'^ 

It began to appear that there were really two 
churches in Ireland. One was the Church of 
Rome, with its papal machinery, its Peter's pence, 
its strong arm to punish those who refused to adopt 
the new system, and its swarms of English monks 
as the managers of its affairs. They took every- 
thing into their hands — schools, monasteries, 
churches and paris^^hes. The government was on 



216 SAINT PATRICK. 

their side. The invading king won the chieftains, 
and the chieftains placed the yoke on the clansmen. 
It was thenceforth a misfortune for one to have 
Irish blood in his veins; it was a crime to have a 
love for the truly ancient Church in his heart. 
" The real origin of Irish popery is the English 
invasion under Henry 11/^ * Of this reign Hume 
says, '' The Irish had been imperfectly converted to 
Christianity ; and what the pope regarded as the 
surest mark of their imperfect conversion, they 
followed the doctrines of their first teachers, and 
had never acknowledged any subjection to the see 
of Home." The chiefs became zealous papists. 
The parliament was Roman Catholic ; the bishops 
were all appointed by the pope, and they had seats 
in the national councils ; the kings were all '^ most 
dearly beloved sons of the pope, devout sons of the 
Churcli,^^ whose will was law and power was 
supreme. 

The other was the Church of Saint Patrick, 
greatly changed indeed, both in form and doctrine, 
but yet asserting her independence of Kome. It 
was a remnant saved from the general wreck. It 
endured severe persecution. '' The Church of the 
native Irish was discountenanced and ignored by 
* Soames, Lat. Church; p. 59. 



SAINT PATRICK. 217 

Rome, as well as by England. It consisted of the 
old Irish clergy and inmates of the monasteries, 
who had not adopted the English manners or 
language, and who were therefore dealt with as 
rebels, and compelled to seek for support from the 
charity or devotion of the people. Many of these 
took refuge in foreign countries;'^ others still 
lingered in places where they waited for the dawn 
of a better dav.''' Then centuries later came the 
great Reformation. It revived the old spirit. 
Many received the gospel anew, and entered into 
the Reformed churches of England or of Scotland, 
and to our times there has been a force of staunch 
Protestants in Ireland, strongest in the northern 
counties, w^here Saint Patrick seems to have laid 
the most enduring foundations. 

Strange reversals occur in history, and one of the 
strangest is, that the Irish people, who owed nothing 
to Rome for their conversion to Christianity, and 
who struggled long against her pretensions, should 
now be reckoned among her most submissive ad- 
herents. They once quoted Saint Patrick against 
her claims and customs, but now they associate 
their devotion to Patrick with their devotion to 
popery. Once he was their great protestant and 
* Todd's St. Patrick, pp. 237-244. 



218 SAINT PATRICK. 

the father of their Church ; now they imagine that 
he was a papist, and they acknowledge the father- 
hood of the man whose toe is kissed in the Vatican. 
Ireland hates England. Well she might, if the 
reason w^ere that the English king Henry II. sold 
her fair domains to the pope and forced her to pay 
the Peter's pence. Before that time she might love 
England and hate Rome ; now she has reversed her 
affection. 

Beautiful Ireland, gem of the sea ! Once the 
resort of students, the home of scholars, the abode 
of poetry, the nursery of orators, the light of 
Europe, the isle of saints ! Along thy shores the 
voyager coasts, and he pities thee, now so oppressed 
by Rome, so darkened by the errors of a perverted 
religion, and he thinks what thou wouldst have 
continued to be had the Church of Saint Patrick 
never been overthrown ! 

Upon no other land did the darkness of the 
Middle Ages more slowly yet more thickly fall; 
over none did ministering angels longer hover to 
witness the courage of those who were the last to 
yield ; in none was truth more completely crushed 
beneath the foreign invader's foot; from none was 
Christian liberty more thoroughly banished ; and 
through none did superstition more boldly walk to 



SAINT PATRICK. 219 

banish God^s holy word, turn history into legends, 
erase the early records of an independent Church, 
and overthrow the monuments of the ancient faith. 
In the course of centuries missionaries dwindled 
into monks, earnest pastors into exacting priests, 
ancient schools into monasteries ; the pulpit with 
the Bible upon it fell back behind the altar set up for 
the mass and the waxen candle ; the simple church 
was overshadowed by the cathedral ; shrines were 
erected to saints, and devotion took the form of 
penance and pilgrimage. Ireland was laid at the 
feet of the so-called Virgin Mary, on whose brow 
was placed the crown that rightly belonged only to 
Christ. True, a small, hidden remnant remained, 
waiting for the Reformation. They accepted it when 
it came. Their sons nobly restored the ancient 
faith ; their toil now is to bring Ireland back to 
the Church of Saint Patrick, so far as it was the 
body of Christ. In that restoration is the hope of 
Erin's deliverance. May Heaven speed the day ! 





CHAPTER XIII. 

LAST DAYS. 

E have wandered. As the work was greater 
than the man^ we have quite lost sight of 
him. He lived to see the Druids cast into 
the shade. They were no longer the power 
behind the throne. Some of them were converted; 
others grew sullen and silent. So many of the 
kings were at least nominally Christian that these 
men of the oaks dared not lift a hand against the 
missionaries. They might steal into the deep for- 
ests and cut the mistletoe, but their barbarous rites 
of sacrifice were ended. 

The Druids had framed many of the old laws, 
and a reform was needed. The tradition is, that 
King Laogaire brought together a council of nine 
wise men to revise the laws of the realm and 
adapt them to the principles of the gospel. Three 
kings, three bishops and three bards are said to 
have sat together in the work : 

The bishops were the most devout Saint Patrick, 
The good Benignus and the wise Cairnech ; 
220 



SAINT PATRICK, 221 

Tlie kings were Laogaire, the Irish monarch, 

A prince in heraldry exactly skilled ; 

With him was joined the ever-prndent Daire, 

The w^arlike king of Ulster; and the third 

Was famous Core, wide Munster's martial king, 

Whose love for letters proved his love for peace; 

The bards, well versed in the antiquities, 

Were faithful Dubtach and the sage Feargus, 

And Eosa, skille4 in foreign languages : 

These nine conned o'er the annals and the laws, 

Erased the errors, the effects of fraud 

Or ignorance, and by the test of truth 

Made good the statutes and the histories.* 

One of the works said to have come from the 
hands of this committee is the Cain PairaiCy or 
" Patrick^s Law/' Perhaps it was begun in his 
time, but the greater part of it is ridiculous enough 
to have come only from the monks of a later age.f 

To him a tract is often ascribed concerning the 
present world, heaven and hell. It is aptly enti- 
tled " The Three Habitations/' in the first of which 
all the living now dwell, and in one of the other 
two every soul must abide after death. It makes 
no reference to purgatory. There is no proof that 

* One ancient MS. bears the title of the Leabhar na Huaidh- 
chongabhala, a work into which we do not pretend to have 
dipped. It was highly approved by the three bards. 

t Todd's St. Patrick, pp. 483, 484. 



222 SAINT PATRICK. 

he wrote a word of it, nor has it any reference to 
the legend of '^ Saint Patrick's Purgatory/' which 
has become proverbial. It seems that on a little 
island in Loch Erne a monastery grew up at a 
later day. When some of the inmates needed to 
be punished, they w^ere sent to a cave near by to 
bring themselves into a better mood, or pilgrims 
were there placed to do penance for their sins. It 
was easy to imagine that through the gloomy 
cavern were seen the spirits of the unhappy, whose 
penance had not been sufficient upon earth. Wild 
tales were told about such visions in order to win 
more money from those who were made to believe 
that even Christians must be purified by suffering 
after death. To give force to the superstition the 
monks laid hold of the name of Patrick, which had 
a charm for the Irish ear and heart. It was de- 
clared that he had been in the cave, and there had 
a sight of the flames of purgatory."^ An English 
knight named Owen went thither and shuddered at 
w^hat he saw. An English monk wrote a pre- 
tended history of the place, and the gross impos- 
ture was supported for centuries by the Anglo-Irish 
bishops in Donegal in order to bring over the 
people to Rome. It is a specimen of the lying 
^ Camden, Britannia, p. 1019. 



SAINT PATRICK, 223 

wonders fixed upon the popular Saint Patrick, and 
this is tlie foundation of his purgatory. 

He believed that to the dying Christian the 
Lord was saying, '' This day shalt thou be with 
me in Paradise/^ The true Church of St. Patrick 
held that man is naturally ignorant of the true 
God, and has nothing of his own but sin ; that 
Christ is sufficient for the salvation of the sinner; 
that the sinner is saved by the grace of God, who 
brings him to a sense of his unbelief through faith 
in Christ, and not by his own works ; that every 
saved sinner is constrained by love to be holy and 
do all the good he can, though he does not thereby 
gain any merit ; and that when the believer dies he 
passes immediately into glory.* 

Great was the love of the people for the zealous 
missionary, so well and so widely known. Thou- 
sands looked up to him as a father whose toils had 
been endured for their good. IS^ot for himself, not 
for power, nor for his own glory, had he lived, but 
for them and for his Lord. They began to count 
the years when he must die. They looked uj)on 
his shorn head,t and thought of the crown of 

* Wilson, Ch. of St. Patrick, p. 77. 

f He was often called the Tailcend, "the shorn crown." It 
was a general custom of that age for the clergy to be marked 



224 SAINT PATRICK. 

righteousness of which he M^as wont to speak. 
When they saw his gray hairs^ they may have 
thought^ as was said of another venerable man, 

When the snow on that mountain-top melts, 
There will be a great flood in this valley. 

It appears that he worked on to the last. Only 

when his strength failed, he ceased to travel along 

the trodden paths, visit the churches already 

planted, plunge into new forests, enter among wild 

tribes, call for lodgings at the castles of warlike 

chiefs, expose himself to perils by robbers and 

murderers, search out the scattered sheep of liis 

Master, found new churches, ordain new pastors 

and set them to feed the flock of God. But i\\Q 

time came when he could not ride so far by day, 

nor face the storm so bravely, nor so safely risk the 

cold, damp air of night. Not so early could he 

^^rise up at the voice of the bird ;" the silver cord 

was loosening, the golden bowl breaking, for he 

by the tonsure. Perhaps it meant at first little more than the 
white cravat now does with some clergymen. But it became in 
the seventh century a weighty matter. Then it was found tliat 
the Irish tonsure was quite different from the Eoman. In the 
Irish the head was shorn on the front, from one ear over to the 
other; in the Roman the whole top was made bare. The ar- 
gument then was that the Irish clergy had Saint Patrick for 
their example. What grave disputes about trifles ! 



SA INT PA TE ICK. 225 

was going to his long home. Old age was creeping 
upon him. He had no eartlily home, no family ; 
no wife to sit by a hearthstone and talk of the 
past scenes on the way of their pilgrimage; no 
brothers in Ireland to invite him beneath a roof 
where he might take his last sleep, and on some 
morning be gone, to their surprise and grief; no 
sisters to make soft the last couch and press their 
warm hands upon his brow as it grew cold ; and the 
only spot that he could claim as his own was the 
grave. Nor to that had he any title-deed ; it must 
be granted in charity. 

The story is, that a gentle voice whispered to him 
that he must soon rest from his labours. It was 
that of Brigid, whose name is linked with his in 
its vast popularity, and given to thousands of Irish 
children. The legend runs that she was '^ the 
daughter of a bard and a beautiful captive, whom 
her master had sent away, like Hagar, at the sug- 
gestion of his wife. Born in grief and shame, she 
was received and baptized along with her mother 
by the disciples of Saint Patrick. In vain would 
her father have taken her back and bestowed her 
in marriage when her beauty and wisdom became 
apparent. She devoted herself to God and the 
poor, and went to live in an oak wood, formerly 

15 



226 SA INT PA TRICK, 

consecrated to the false gods. . . . She founded 
the first female monastery which Ireland had 
known, under the name of Kildare, the cell of the 
oak/' * It can hardly be denied that in the time 
of Patrick some pious women caught the spirit of 
a secluded life. Were it not for this, we should 
think that Brigid lived at a later age, if indeed she 
lived at all. Only a few grains of wheat can be 
winnowed from the bushels of chaffy legends 
which assume to be her history. Yet it is barely 
possible that, with tear-dewed hands, she embroid- 
ered a shroud for the body of Patrick when he 
should die. 

The aged missionary could not forget the first spot 
of earth which he had secured for his Lord. The 
old barn, the Sabhal church, could not be deprived 
of his first love. About fifty years had passed 
since he had landed on its neighbouring shore. 
Thither he went to die in the arms of the brethren, 
who there had their home for study and the in- 
struction of youth. t Their spiritual father of 

^ Montalembert, Monks of the West, ii. p. 393. 

fit was another Patrick, who died at Glastonbury, in Wales. 
He seems to have been an abbot at Armagh, and to have died 
in 850 from the fury of the Danes. In later times he was con- 
founded with his great namesake, and pilgrimages were made 
by the Irish to Glastonbury on account of Saint Patrick. 



SAINT PATRICK. 227 

ninety-six years must have warned them against 
an abuse of devotion to study, and entreated them 
to go forth and preach to the ignorant tribes the 
name of Jesus. He was not a monk. He did not 
believe that monasteries were the chief places 
where the Lord dwelt. Perhaps he said as another 
advised in later times^ ^^ Go away from God, if you 
think he is only at a convent, and you will find 
him wherever you labour for him.^^ Such, we think, 
would have been the counsel of Patrick. 

When he died the sad report went forth afar, 
and in all the churches there was weeping. What 
a privilege to be at his funeral ! The clergy 
gathered in large numbers to lay him in his grave. 
We give no credit to the legend that Armagh 
sharply disputed with Saul for his body, and that 
to settle the matter it was placed in a cart, and the 
oxen bidden to go whither they pleased, taking it 
to a place now called Downpatrick. When their 
father was to be buried the sons did not all become 
fools. They surely did not separate into armies, 
fighting for his remains, until the oxen decided the 
case, and then drop the feud. The simple fact 
seems to be that he was solemnly and honorably 
laid in a grave at Downpatrick, near the spot where 
he had first preached the gospel in Ireland. 



228 SA INT PA TRICK. 

The early Church of Saint Patrick seems not to 
have adored his relics. There was no virtue in his 
grave, that it should become a sacred place of re- 
sort. Those Christians kept no lights ever burn- 
ing upon it. They reared no monument over it 
which time could not destroy. To it they made 
no pilgrimages, thus to win merit or to gain his 
favour as a patron saint. No shrine was there for 
the offerings of their penance. Had such been the 
case, his grave would certainly have been better 
known in after centuries. His name was written 
upon their hearts; his monument was the work 
that he had done for Christ. No other is so 
worthy of a good man, in whatever age he may 
live, or land he may toil. 

The date of his death is fixed, by the Annals of 
Ulster, in the year 493,"^ nor is there any good 
reason to question it. That he was born, baptized 
and called from earth on a Wednesday is a mere 
tradition, framed to suit the Roman theories. The 
seventeenth of March is observed as ^^ Saint 
Patrick^s Day,^' but the day of his decease none 
can determine. It was a cunning artifice of Rome 
to seize upon the names of eminent Christians and 
claim them as her ^^ saints.'^ Even the apostles 
* Thus also ]Jssher, Anc. Irish ; Cave, Scrip. Eccl. 



SAINT PATRICK. 229 

were taken bv her craft, and their names enrolled 
upon her calendar^ as if they had been one in faith 
with every Boniface and Gregory, Nor was this 
the worst. These ^^saints^^ came to be adored. The 
pope declared that they were worthy objects of 
general worship, and prayers were addressed to 
them as intercessors with God. Thus Patrick was 
captured by Roman hands, and set up as an idol 
for the people to adore. In one of the Irish 
Psalters he is mentioned as 

The divine Saint Patrick, who possessed 
The first place in the Irish calendar, 
And was the guardian angel of the isle. 

And this saint- worship is not a folly of the past, 
when there was some excuse for ignorance. It is 
a sin of the present, and in our own land. It is 
approved by the highest authorities of the Roman 
Church in America. Those who offer ^^The Litany 
of Saint Patrick^^ repeat these words: ^^ Saint 
Patrick, apostle of Ireland, model of bishops, 
profoundly humble, consumed with zeal, example 
of charity, glory of Ireland, instructor of little 
ones, our powerful protector, our compassionate 
advocate ! pray for us !" The " Novena to Saint 
Patrick^^ is even worse ; for in it are these peti- 
tions : " Glorious Saint Patrick ! receive my 



230 SAINT PATRICK. 

prayers, and accept the sentiments of gratitude and 
veneration with which my heart is filled toward 
thee. . . . O charitable shepherd of the Irish 
flock ! who wouldst have laid down a thousand 
lives to save one soul, take my soul and the souls 
of all Christians under thy especial care, and pre- 
serve us from the dreadful misfortunes of sin. . . . 
I most humbly recommend to thee this country 
[the United States], Avitli that which was so dear 
to thee while on earth."* 

To rescue the true Patrick from the hands of 
such Romanists, who insult God by adoring a good 
man, is a work that needs to be done. If the 
present attempt shall aid in such a result ; if it be 
shown that they have no sort of claim to him ; if 
the reader shall find evidence that he was a zealous 
missionary, who sought to win souls to Christ, and 
that, with all his errors, he was nevertheless one of 
the greatest men of his age, and if anything shall 
be found herein to kindle piety, — the effort may be 
blessed. 

The God of Joseph was the God of Patrick. In 
the one case he permitted a Hebrew youth to be 

* " The Golden Manual, being a Guide to Catholic devotion, 
&c. With the approbation of the Most Rev. John Hughes, 
Archbishop of New York." 1853. 



SAINT PATIilCK. 231 

taken from liis home, and sold into Egypt for a 
great purpose; in the other, he had a wise design 
in 30 bringing good out of evil that a British lad 
was stolen from his parents and sold into Ireland. 
How dark was his providence to each of them in 
his younger days ! Plow hard then to read his 
goodness in the event, and yet how plain his glory 
afterward ! Each was a slave. ^' It is good for a 
man that he bear the yoke in his youth. He 
sitteth alone and keepeth silence, because he hath 
borne it upon him. He putteth his mouth in the 
dust: if so be there may be hope. He giveth his 
cheek to him that smiteth him; he is filled with 
reproach. For the Lord will not cast off for ever ; 
but though he cause grief, yet w411 he have com- 
passion according to the multitude of his mercies.^^'^ 
Each of these bondsmen in a foreign land was a 
dreamer of such dreams as God sent for good 
toward a people. Joseph is led to provide abun- 
dant stores of corn for a time of famine — Patrick 
is led to bear the bread of eternal life to a people 
famishing in sin. Each sees the mysteries of God 
open with mercies, and can thank him for the 
ways wdiich were higher than his \vays, and the 
thouo;:hts which w^ere above his thout^hts. This 
* Lamentations iii. 27-32. 



232 SAINT PATRICK. 

parallel may have struck the mind of Patrick^ and 
it is possible that he once used such words as are 
put into his mouth by one of his biographers : '^ I 
am here by the same Providence that sent Joseph 
into Egypt to save the lives of his father and 
brethren/^ 

Still farther may we compare them. Joseph was 
faithful to his master^ and thus Avon the favour of 
those who had the command of his services. Thus 
it seems to have been w^ith young Patrick. Such a 
lesson should not be lost. Those who may be under 
the bidding of severe and exacting employers may 
gain their confidence by being faithful. This 
qualifies them for a good influence. Character 
speaks; the light shines; hardest hearts may be 
touched^ and God may be glorified. 

The Lord who heard young Patriek^s prayer 
has never grown weary ; never has he turned away 
his ear from the voice of the penitent, crying to 
him night and day, amid sunshine and in stormiest 
days ; never was he slumbering when the seeker 
after God rose up to plead with him before the 
dawn. Thus Patrick sought the Lord amid the 
rains and snows and darkness ; he found the ever- 
gracious Redeemer. Is anyone now so earnest? 
Is any so devout ? Patrick, God is waiting for 



SAINT PATRICK. 233 

the voice of prayer. The young exile found him 
a covenant-keeping God. To be born of Christian 
parents, to have been dedicated to the Lord in 
infancy, to be the child of prayers and tears, is a 
great privilege. Such a one has the noblest 
lineage. Let every one thus favoured think of the 
obligations that rest upon him. But grace is not 
inherited by birth — not even from a father who is 
a deacon, and a grandfather who is a presbyter. 
On that succession Patrick could not depend. He 
must remember his sins, repent, and accept the 
grace of the covenant made for his good, between 
his parents and their God, when he was baptized 
and consecrated to him. Who knows but that in 
virtue of the sign the Lord granted to him the 
things signified? Who knows but that for the 
sake of that covenant God remembered him in a 
strange land, turned the iron furnace into a school 
of prayer and piety, blessed him with the deliver- 
ance of his soul from sin, led him out of bondage 
and restored him to his father's house ? Who 
knows but that his father and mother had often 
besought the Lord to make their son a preacher of 
the gospel, like his grandfather? Perhaps it was 
in answer to their prayers that Patrick became a 
missionary, so eminent in his day that he stands 



234 SAINT PATRICK. 

forth as the type of a class of Christian heroes, who 
plunged into deep forests and triumphed over the 
forces of barbarism. 

What kindles the missionary spirit ? What now 
will induce young men to make an effort for the 
salvation of the pagan world ? Just what led 
Patrick to devote his life to the work — the love of 
God and the sad condition of the heathen. The 
one he had felt in his heart — the other he had seen 
with his eyes. Think of him tending the flocks 
on the hills, where he met not a man who knew of 
his God, his gospel, his heaven or his eternity. 
What a moral desert ! Savage chiefs were ever 
plotting war, and degraded clansmen rushing to 
the fray. Barbarous revels were heard in the 
castles, and the howling of the Druids in the oaken 
forests. Robbers were the freemen ; every child 
might be carried away and sold as a slave. He 
saw enough to sicken his heart. He pitied the 
heathen of Ireland, and no man will ever do his 
duty to the pagan world unless he is touched with 
a like compassion. You need not visit the heathen 
land ; the picture of its woes may come in the next 
Christian magazine. An hour's study may waken 
the pity that will kindle the spirit to lend the 
needed aid. Patrick went himself. A world of 



SAINT PATRICK. 235 

work was before him. The mode of boginuing it 
was simple; the courage to begin at all was sublime. 
But he pitied men^ he prayed to God, he went 
everywhere preaching the Word, with love to sin- 
ners and an enthusiasm for Christ. There never 
was a harder field for labour. '' There never was 
a nobler missionary than Patrick.^^ There never 
was such a civilizing power as Christianity. 

We surely may think of Patrick as a man who 
first entered Ireland as a slave, but who died in it 
a victor. Erin never knew his like. Xo other 
name was ever so stamped upon that island and 
her people. It is the very synonym of an Irish- 
man ; we expect him to answer to it. It is Ireland's 
compliment to her greatest Christian teacher. The 
Irish mother who gives it to her son bestows 
more real honour upon the memory of Saint 
Patrick than is rendered in all the prayers offered 
to him by the multitude of people who. sw^ear by 
his name and hold him as a guardian saint. We 
would restore his character, and remember him as 
a man who was fired with the missionary spirit ; 
who braved the seas in his little boat and landed 
among strangers ; who walked up from the shore 
to offer to the barbarians the greatest gift of 
heaven ; who gathered about him a little circle of 



236 SAINT PA TRICK, 

listeners, and moulded them into different men; 
who overthrew great idolatries, and raised the true 
cross of Jesus where had stood the altars of the 
Druids. His sphere enlarged. He stood before 
courts; he travelled through the counties. He 
dictated reforms to the monarch on the throne, and 
sought liberty for the menial beneath the thatch. 
He set on foot a system of schools, in which were 
reared kings for the crown, ministers for the State, 
Christian bards to make a nation's songs, and wise 
men to frame her laws, pastors for the gathering 
flocks and missionaries to foreign lands. In no 
small degree he changed the State and reared the 
Church. He put in motion the forces of a Chris- 
tian civilization, no doubt taking up the measures 
which the Culdees had introduced before him, in- 
fusing a new spirit into their system, and bringing 
out of their secluded cells the light that was meant 
to shine forth into the broad world. 

In such a man we ought to find much to imitate. 
Not faultless, not free from certain errors of his age, 
not a Paul of the first century, not a Judson of the 
nineteenth ; yet he shared largely in the traits of 
an apostle and the devotion of a missionary. To 
preach Christ to the heathen was his great idea and 
purpose. With him the gospel was not simply a 



SAINT PA TRICK, 237 

revelation of God's love to himself; not a gift 
which he could accept for himself alone, and retreat 
into some remote corner to study and cherish ; it 
was a proclamation. It was something to be pub- 
lished, to be told everywhere, and to be urged upon 
the dullest ear and the hardest heart. He would 
be its herald, giving it forth to all men with a 
generous hand. 

To live for Christ, as he thought, was not to be 
a monk ; it was to be a missionary. This was his 
character. We doubt whether there was one other 
missionary in the fifth century who was his equal — 
one other so unresting, so ardent, so enthusiastic 
for souls, so stout in rough trials, and so anxious 
to lift up his voice in wilds where the name of 
Jesus had never been uttered. We doubt whether 
the example of any other man in that age did 
more to fire the hearts of young men with the mis- 
sionary spirit. It was the burning coal in the 
Irish Church. When he was gone, an host of 
messengers arose, not to light a torch at the king's 
flame, and run over the hills with ^' the fiery cross'^ 
of the Druids, but to touch Patrick's burning coal 
with their lips, and hasten afar with the name of 
Christ to the perishing. Despite the tendency in 
Irishmen to become monks, no other land in that 



238 SAINT PATRICK. 

age sent forth more missionaries. Ireland tlien 
excelled Rome in the work of publishing the gos- 
pel. Hear one of them of the ninth century, 
Claude Clement, who is said to have founded the 
University of Paris under Charlemagne, and then 
gone into Northern Italy. He says : " When I 
came to Turin, I found all the churches full of 
abominations and images ; and because I began to 
destroy what every one adored, every one began to 
open his mouth against me. They say, ' We do 
not believe there is anything divine in the image ; 
we only reverence it in honour of the individual 
whom it represents.^ I answer, If they who liave 
quitted the worship of devils, honour the images 
of saints, they have not forsaken idols — they have 
only changed their names ; for whether you paint 
upon a wall the pictures of St. Peter or St. Paul, 
or those of Jupiter or Mercury, they are now 
neither gods, nor apostles, nor men. The name is 
changed : the error continues the same. ... If 
the cross of Christ ought to be adored because he 
was nailed to it, for the same reason we ought to 
adore mangers, because he was laid in one; and 
swaddling-clothes, because he was wrapped in 
them. AVe are not ordered to adore the cross, b;ut 
to bear it, and denv ourselves. Shall we not be- 



SAINT PATRICK, 239 

lieve God when he swears that neither Noah, nor 
Daniel, nor Job shall deliver son or daughter by 
their righteousness ; for this end he makes the de- 
claration, that none might put confidence in the 
intercession of the saints/^* This learned and 
zealous man may have imitated Saint Patrick, but 
he did not worship him. He swept out of the 
churches of Piedmont the Roman novelties, and 
aided the ancient Waldenses in bringing the people 
back to the old religion of apostolic days. ' 

A late Roman Catholic author, ashamed of the 
puerilities of Joceline, and yet anxious to set forth 
Patrick as the " patron Saint of the Emerald Isle/^ 
if not of all America, says of him, in about the 
best passage of his book : '' He found it a task 
much more arduous to reform the heart and root 
out paganism and vice, when fortified by custom 
and long habits ; but his constant application to 
the great work, his patience, his humility and in- 
vincible courage, conquered all opposition. Divine 
Providence .... endued this champion of the gos- 
pel with all the natural qualities which were re- 
quisite for the functions of an apostle. His genius 
was sublime and capable of the greatest designs ; 
his heart fearless ; his charity was not confined to 
* Uglier, Religion Anc. Irish. 



240 SAINT PATRICK, 

words and thoughts, but shone out In works and 
actions^ and extended itself to the service of his 
neighbours^ to whom he carried the light of the 
gospel/^ "^ 

We close in harmony with the final sentence 
of the Confession : " I pray those who believe 
and fear God^ and who may condescend to look 
into this writing, which Patrick the sinner, an un- 
learned man, wrote in Hibernia, if I have done or 
established any little thing according to G*d^s will, 
that not a man of them will ever say that my ig- 
norance did it ; but think ye and let it be verily 
believed that it was the gift of God/^ 

* Life of St. Patrick, published by Murphy, 1861. 



THE END. 



